Anglo-Saxon and Roman CriminalJurisprudence. LENGTH OF TRIALS UNDER BOTH SYSTEMS.
I often hear the complaint, too, that under the Roman system the trial proceeds very slowly, and asserted that criminal trials in the United States terminate more speedily, I am not prepared to say under which of the two systems of criminal procedure the trial is sooner brought to an end. When the trial actually begins it may take a shorter time in the United States, because once begun, it cannot be interrupted. It often happens, however, that a long time elapses before a case is brought to trial; and this time is longer when a new trial is granted. It should be borne in mind that most of the courts in this country hold sessions but for a few weeks or months at a time, and that only during these sessions do they hear cases. In LatinAmerican countries, on the other hand, the courts are open and working alt the year round. Moreover, under the common law system, the whole of the trial takes place be fore the jury, so that the exclusive attention of the court is necessarily devoted to that case. Only one case, therefore, can be tried at a time. In Latin-American countries a judge may try several cases concurrently, be cause, even where the jury system has been adopted, as it has in Mexico, a great portion of the proceedings takes place before the judge without the jury. As a consequence of this, trials in this country, by reason of the crowded condition of the dockets, are often delayed for months at a time, while in the Latin countries trials begin as soon as the prisoners are arrested. MEXICAN PRISONS.
I often hear in this country great com plaints made against the Mexican prisons, which are said to be uncomfortable, and some times considered filthy. It is a fact that some prisons in Mexico are in a very poor condi tion; but that is due to the limited resources of the country. A poor country cannot afford
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to build magnificent prisons; yet notwith standing that we have to contend wijth want of means, the States of Jalisco and Puebla have built spacious and comfortable peniten tiaries at Guadalajara and Puebla, their respec tive capitals, and the State of Guanajuato at the city of Salamanca. Other States, as San Luis Potosi, are constructing new penitentia ries, and the Federal Government is conclud ing the erection of one at the City of Mexico which will favorably compare with any in this country. Prisons cannot be as comfortable as pal aces or hotels, and even in this country, with all its wealth, advancement, and prosperity, prisons are sometimes very objectionable.1 If we had two sets of prisons in Mexico, one for Mexican citizens and the other for foreigners, and if the former were more com fortable than the latter, the citizens of this country would have reason to complain; but if we treat them on an equal footing with our own citizens, and if we give them the best we can, — that is, if we keep them in the same building, provide the same food, and extend to them the same conditions that we do our 'The New York Herald of the 29th of October, 1895, published the following statement, made to the Board of Es timate by Miss Rosa Butler of the State Charities Waif As sociation, about the deplorable condition of Blackwell's Isl and Almshouse : — "Among these evils are the terrible overcrowding at the almshouse, where, even during the past summer, more than three hundred persons slept on beds made on the floor; unsuitability of the almshouse building, 1,500 occupying build ings which have neither hot nor cold water, no bath-rooms, no lavatories; the wretchedly inadequate nursing ai the alms house hospitals, there being but one untrained and incompe tent nurse for every forty patients; the unskilled and inade quate nursing on Randall's Island, where of loo foundlings cared for in 1894, 119 died, and of 384 other infants, not foundlings, cared for without their mothers, 296 died; the dilapidated condition of the City Hospital, to which no re pairs have been made for several years; the employment of workhouse prisoners in hospital kitchens; placing the ery sipelas wards in the dock house, which is old, noisy and in fested with vermin; the lack of proper facilities of dealing with casual lodgers, and so forth." If prisons that are in the heart of the City of New York, the largest and wealthiest of this country, and under its im mediate supervisions, are in that state, the bad condition of some of the Mexican prisons is certainly nothing extraordi nary.
