Liberty in Mexico. Группа авторов
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a crime that everyone considers capital, and we want him executed, be the deed proven or not, and be there or not an express law that condemns him.
Well, now, is there a single man, not yet liberal, humane, and enlightened, but one who preserves in his soul some love, some respect for justice, who is not embarrassed by such a claim and by giving a response that one would not even find in the mouths of those who make up the most savage tribe? For this is, in sum, the behavior of those who demand the head of an accused person without knowing whether he is guilty because they have not studied his case, and the response they tacitly give when they are told that, because the constitution did not give them the right to apply the laws but rather gave it to the judges named by the government, they must leave those judges in full freedom so they might judge according to the circumstances of the trial and what their consciences tell them, and that to intimidate a judge with threats so that he
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would pronounce a verdict dictated to him is the greatest crime that can be committed against the constitution, for it tears down and destroys at a single blow the distribution, division, balance, and independence of the powers that have been established in it for the benefit of all.
But still they reply: And if the judge has been bribed to acquit a criminal or impose on him a more gentle punishment than the one he strictly deserves? The assumption, generally, is false and slanderous and almost always unfounded, but conceding that it might not be, the solution is very simple and delimited in the same laws: denounce such a scandalous and criminal breach of trust, judicially pursue that one or those who have sold justice, and ensure by legal means that a sensational example is made of them in order to dissuade all others who are in that situation from imitating their iniquity. But to threaten with taking justice into their own hands and killing the accused on the pretext that the judge has treated him with too much kindness, and to intimidate the tribunal that has not ruled to their satisfaction, more than being the greatest affront, the greatest insult that can be made to humanity, to reason, and to justice, is the surest way to put an end to the constitutional regime and the most infallible means of making even the name of liberty hateful.
In the first place, if such crimes are repeated, there would not be a single good man who would want to be a judge in a country in which he is threatened and the verdicts he is to pronounce are dictated to him, for no man of any probity wants to see himself reduced to the difficult choice of committing an injustice or being ridiculed and insulted. In the second place, what sensible man would want to live under a government which, were he to have the misfortune to be accused justly or unjustly of certain crimes, could not prevent his conviction, even when the tribunals recognized his innocence? Who would not hasten to flee from such a country of iniquity? Who would not blaspheme free institutions if they saw that, with this name, the upheaval of society, the subversion of all principles, and the violation of the most sacred rights were justified?
Among all injustices, the most odious, the least bearable, is that which is committed with judicial forms in the name of justice and by the very magistrates who were supposed to administer it. And if this is so, when the injustice is the result of the error or maliciousness of the judge, how much more horrific and terrible will the atrocity be when it is born of violence? Against the errors or personal arbitrariness of the judges, the
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Constitution and the laws have provided us with a solution, authorizing appeals, and if these are not sufficient, means for annulment; but against the violence of threats or at gunpoint, what means will the unfortunate person have over whom this storm bursts? None, of course. Those who applaud, praise, or excuse at least the first crimes of this kind can now count on the most bitter fruits, for they serve as the text for the disrepute and slanders with which our enemies seek to discredit us in cultured, powerful, and civilized Europe.
It is time now that those who heretofore have proceeded in this way retrace their steps and consider that violating justice, trampling on the authority, so respectable, of the tribunals, and intimidating and threatening individuals is not a good way to guarantee and make amiable the present order of things. It will have served nothing to have removed and eliminated the power and favor that resurrected the notable extraordinary authorities, the weak influence they could have on tribunals and their decisions, if an influence much more direct, powerful, and terrible in criminal sentences is now usurped by a fraction of the people.
No good intention, no motive, however noble one might suppose it to be, can justify the threats that, in private conversations and gatherings and in some public papers, are poured on the judges and other constituted authorities because they do not venture to violate the forms, upset the order of trials, or apply capital punishment to those who, in their judgment, do not deserve it; on this point reason is in agreement with the Constitution and the laws. We sincerely desire to make those who are thus deluded know the truth, and for this, without insisting more on the incontrovertible truths that we have just urged, we will conclude our discourse with one single observation.
They say that they are lovers of justice and of the present order of things, that they see it perishing through the apathy and delay of the judges in accelerating cases and for their kindness in the application of punishments; arrange, then, the judges and tribunals in the desired way and, once this is done, let us ask what will happen when these judges acquit, as will happen many times, one or more persons accused of political crimes? Will they seek them out to take their lives because they have not ruled as they wanted? And who, after all this, would accept the honorable post of judge? And what would become of the liberty and independence that the law assures them in their deliberations and judgments if they do not have to perform according to their conscience, but
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rather at the whim of those who want everyone executed whom they suppose deserving of the ultimate punishment? We say that many of those accused of political crimes would be fully acquitted because, in the moment men see themselves invested with the august character of the judgeship, they become other than what they were before, and they see themselves placed under an obligation to follow the precise letter of the law. From this results that, not being able to get out of the case material anticipated in the law that serves as the basis for the accusation of guilt, and this many times not being the same as the law designates, they have to declare him not guilty of the crime of which he is accused; and as it is very difficult for the law to anticipate or precisely define all crimes, for some crimes it will inevitably come about, because of not being specified in the code, that it will be necessary to acquit the accused. We have many examples of this even in those tribunals disposed absolutely to condemn and universally recognized as barbarous and inhumane.
These detestable qualities cannot be denied in the revolutionary tribunal established in the very sad days of the French Convention and under the immediate influence of Robespierre; nonetheless, this tribunal, although in reality it was not a tribunal nor did it merit such a name simply because it had the appearance of one, sometimes did not satisfy the revolutionaries and absolved from the pain of death various persons accused of political crimes through the fury of the revolutionaries. One must, then, be convinced that it will not be possible to find a judge, even though deliberately sought, who would be sufficient to quench that rabid thirst for blood that rises in those moments immediately following the triumph of political factions, and that generally is due more to ignoble revenge than to impartial justice.
And will it be a great misfortune for society if the executioner has fewer occasions to exercise his odious and terrible ministry? If sound philosophy would like the bloody spectacle of an execution to be abolished, even for common atrocious crimes, will this show itself with more profusion and fewer formalities in political crimes that are only crimes in specific places? If those actions that generally depend on opinion going astray, on erroneous concepts and wrong ideas must be punished with the loss of life, what punishment, then, will be imposed on murderers, thieves, and the other vicious people whose crimes have their source in the heart’s perversity? Yes, we insist that it be kept in mind that political crimes are among those in which some leniency is appropriate,
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because ordinarily they are born of an error in understanding and not of that malignancy of an incorrigible heart which,