After a few preliminaries, the trial began with a violent denunciation of the accused by the public prosecutor—a stuggy, fierce-looking negro with bloodshot eyes, named Bazin, who thought he best performed his duty by abuse. As one of the prisoners was a lawyer, all the bar had inscribed their names as his defenders, and they showed considerable courage in the task they had undertaken. On the least sign of independence on their part, one after the other was ordered to prison, and the accused remained without a defender.
The principal judge was Lallemand, of whom I have elsewhere spoken as combining gentleness with firmness; but he could scarcely make his authority respected by Bazin, the military termagant who led the prosecution. He browbeat the witnesses, bullied the jury, thundered at the lawyers, and insulted the prisoners. He looked like a black Judge Jeffreys. At last his language became so violent towards the audience, of whom we formed a part, that the diplomatic and consular corps rose in a body and left the court. I never witnessed a more disgraceful scene.
I may add that the prisoners were condemned to death; but we interfered, and had their sentence commuted to imprisonment, which did not last long; whilst their black persecutor, seized by some insurgents the following year, was summarily shot.[17]
This experience of the working of the trial-by-jury system did not encourage frequent visits to the tribunals, and afterwards I rarely went, except when some British subject was interested.
In the capital are the court of cassation, the civil and commercial courts, and the tribuneaux de paix; and in the chief towns of the departments similar ones, minus the court of cassation. In fact, as far as possible, the French system has been taken as a model. The form is there, but not the spirit.
The statistical tables connected with this subject have been very fully worked out in Major Stuart’s very interesting Consular Reports for 1876 and 1877. Here I am more concerned in describing how justice is administered. I may at once say that few have any faith in the decisions of the courts; the judges, with some bright exceptions, are too often influenced by pecuniary or political considerations, and the white foreigner, unless he pay heavily, has but slight chance of justice being done him.
In the police courts they know their fate beforehand. During my stay in Port-au-Prince foreigners avoided them, but sometimes they had unavoidably to appear. An elderly Frenchman was summoned before a juge de paix for an assault upon a black. The evidence was so much in favour of the white that even the Haytian magistrate was about to acquit him, when shouts arose in different parts of the court, “What! are you going to take part with the white?” and the Frenchman was condemned. So flagrant an abuse of justice could not be passed over, and the authorities, afraid to have the sentence quashed by a superior tribunal, allowed the affair to drop without demanding the fine.
An American black came one day to Mr. Byron, our Vice-Consul, and said he had been accused of stealing a box of dominoes from his landlady, and asked him to accompany him to court to see justice done him. Mr. Byron, knowing the man to be respectable, did so. The accuser stated that whilst sitting at her door talking to a neighbour, she saw her lodger put the box of dominoes into his pocket and walk off with it. She made no remark at the time, but next day accused him. The man denied having touched the box. The magistrate, however, observed, “She says she saw you; you can’t get over that,”—and had not Mr. Byron remarked that the prisoner’s word was as good as the accuser’s, being at least as respectable a person, he would instantly have been sent to prison.
A remarkable trial was that of two brothers, who were accused of having murdered a Frenchman, their benefactor. The evidence against them appeared overwhelming, and their advocate, a thorough ruffian, was at a loss for arguments to sustain the defence. At last he glanced round the crowded court, and then turned to the jury with a broad grin and said, “Après tout, ce n’est qu’un blanc de moins.” The sally produced a roar of laughter, and the prisoners were triumphantly acquitted by the tribunal, but not by public opinion; and the people still sing a ditty of which the refrain is, I think, “Moué pas tué p’tit blanc-là,”—“I did not kill that little white man.”
In 1869, among about fifty political refugees that lived for months in the Legation was one of the accused. I was standing watching him play draughts with another refugee, who did not know the name of his opponent, and he kept humming the song about the murder, and every time he made a move he repeated the refrain, “Moué pas tué p’tit blanc-là.” I noticed his opponent getting paler and paler. At last he pushed aside the board, started to his feet, and said, “Do you wish to insult me?” We were all surprised, when a friend called me aside and told me the story of the trial.