"No deceit safe in its hiding place": The criminal trial in eighteenth-century Spain

Law and History Review

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 449-478

  López Lázaro, Fabio ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

^b History Department

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 30244506998     PISSN: 07382480     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1556316     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. For example, see Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808-1975, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 1-38. The term "failure," which organizes Carr's analysis of Old Regime society, is symptomatic of his theoretical assumptions and anachronistic preconceptions. John H. Elliott's popular introduction to early modern Spain also contributed to this vision of historical disappointment, or malfunction
2. See his Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1954)
3. See also Michael R. Weisser's comments in Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe (Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), 52
4. In developing my counterargument to the Carr-Elliott interpretation of Spanish history as a long-drawn record of "failure," I have drawn on the revisionist insights of Helen Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516-1700 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
5. especially comments on 157, as well as the philosophical shrewdness of Anthony Giddens's structuration theory, "Structuralism, Post-structuralism and the Production of Culture," in Social Theory Today, ed. Anthony Giddens and Jonathan H. Turner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987)
6. This collection includes Ira J. Cohen's useful critique, "Structuration Theory and Social Praxis," 273-308
7. I also referred to Giddens, New Rules of the Sociological Method (New York: Basic Books, 1977)
8. and idem, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1984)
9. Enlightened absolutism has a long scholarly tradition. Indicative of the classic trends for Spain are Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958)
10. and Jean Sarrailh, L'Espagne éclairée de la seconde moitié du 18e siècle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1964). For our purposes, the work of Ruth Pike has blazed a trail. She has been the only major analyst of the Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte's records
11. See Pike, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983)
12. and idem, "Capital Punishment in Eighteenth-Century Spain," Social History 5 (1985): 375-86
13. A sampling of recent works should include Donald R. Kelley, Historians and the Law in Postrevolutionary France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)
14. David J. A. Cairns, Advocacy and the Making of the Adversarial Criminal Trial, 1800-1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
15. H. W. Arthurs, "Without the Law": Administrative Justice and Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth-Century England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985)
16. Michael John, Politics and the Law in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), especially chap. 1, "The Theory and Practice of Codification, 1814-1867"
17. the collection of essays edited by Robert Badinter, Un Autre Justice 1789-1799 (Paris: Fayard, Histoire de la Justice, 1990), especially the contributions of N. Castan, J.-P. Royer, P. Lascoumes, and P. Poncela
18. For another discussion of French criminal adminstration in a revolutionary period that hints at the political utilization of Ancien Régime legal institutions, see Iain Cameron, Crime and Repression in the Auvergne and the Guyenne, 1720-1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
19. See also John A. Davis, Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1988), an especially enlightening discussion of the connections between evolving liberal political ideologies and criminal law reform
20. David Bushnell, Reform and Reaction in the Platine Provinces, 1810-1852 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983) is a rare look into these processes in the Latin American context
21. see also the discussion of reform in Alan Norrie, Crime, Reason, and History: A Critical Introduction to Criminal Law (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 1-33
22. Even England was not immune to the explicit repudiation of the "old system" of law in the nineteenth century; see Peter Stein, "Legal Theory and The Reform of Legal Education in Mid-Nineteenth Century England," in his The Character and Influence of the Roman Civil Law (London and Ronceverte: The Hambledon Press, 1988)
23. I agree with the legal historians O. F. Robinson, T. D. Fergus, and W. M. Gordon hat the general trend extends across Western Europe, despite local variations. See Robinson, Fergus, and Gordon, An Introduction to European Legal History (Abingdon: Professional Books, 1985), 438-42
24. Quoted by Norrie, Crime, Reason, and History, 8
25. In a larger context the stereotyping of all Spanish law as inquisitorial fits into R. C. Van Caenegem's argument that there has been a powerful stereotyping of English law as somehow more democratic historically than continental law. See his Judges, Legislators, and Professors: Chapters in European Legal History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 73-83
26. The classic works are Alfonso García Gallo, Curso de historia del derecho español (Madrid: Artes gráficas, 1950)
27. and Francisco Tomás Valiente, El derecho penal de la monarquía absoluta, siglos XVI-XVII-XVIII (Madrid: Tecnos, 1969)
28. For a brief discussion of the background to the government system of turnismo under Cánovas del Castillo in the 1870s and 1880s, see Carr, Spain, 1808-1975, 355-61
29. Royal Decree of September 14, 1882, for the "Ley de enjuiciamiento" of June 22, 1882, copied in Revista de los tribunales y de legislación universal, Ley de enjuiciamiento criminal anotada con jurisprudencia y circulares de la fiscalía del Tribunal Supremo y cuantas disposiciones la complementan, y seguida de interesantes apéndices, 7th ed. (Madrid: Góngora, 1932), 32
30. Jean François Bourgoing, Nouveau Voyage en Espagne: ou Tableau de l'état actuel de cette monarchie. . . . (Paris: n.p., 1789), 1: 398-99
31. Richard Ford, A Hand-book for Travellers to Spain (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966), 3: 1177
32. Ley de enjuiciamiento, 11-29
33. Francisco Antonio de Elizondo, Práctica Universal Forense (Madrid: Joachin Ibarra, 1773-1791), 3: 299
34. I have adopted R. J. Sharpe's definition of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English practice, The Law of Habeas Corpus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 4-6
35. Habeas corpus is fundamental. Even Abraham admits, in fact, that this is perhaps one of the most important "ancient, basic safeguards inherent in the philosophy of the law, safeguards which, to a greater or lesser degree, are fundamental to the notions of liberty and justice that pervade the political system of the liberal democratic West." Abraham, The Judicial Process, 96
36. Elizondo, Practica forense universal, 4: 336
37. José Marcos Gutiérrez, Práctica criminal de España (Madrid: Fermín Villalpando, 1819), 360. There is evidence, however, that fewer and fewer judges sat on these habeas corpus assessment meetings. The trend from 1750 to 1808 is apparently a weakening of the application of habeas corpus controls on criminal trials, at least at the Madrid tribunals
38. Antonio Martínez Salazar, Colección de Memorias, y Noticias del Gobierno General, y Político de el Real, y Supremo Consejo de Castillo (Madrid: n.p., 1764), 348
39. Martínez Salazar, Colección, 380
40. This is indicated in the archival records by the junior judge's annotation: "Vuelva la causa al Señor Juez de ella para lo que lleva entendido." This step was summarized nicely by Andrés Cornejo, Diccionario histórico y forense del Derecho Real de España (Madrid: Joachin Ibarra, 1779), 2: 5-7
41. On the general steps formally required for a sumaria to become a plenaria in the Madrid tribunal, see, for example, Marcos Gutiérrez, Practica criminal de España, 1: 352-64
42. Marcos Gutiérrez, Practica criminal de España, 360. Whenever this sort of complaint occurred, the documents in a case file would remain in the possession of the court's notary. The judges jealously guarded all files
43. Lorenzo Matheu y Sanz, Tractatus de re criminali . . . (Madrid: Apud D. Antonio de Sancha, 1776), controversia 25, number 80
44. and Vicente Vizcaíno Pérez, Código y práctica criminal arreglado a las leyes de España (Madrid: 1797), 301
45. This was part of the Count of Floridablanca's program for the Junta Suprema de Estado in 1788. The Suprema functioned from 1788 to 1797 as a ministers' caucus for discussion and determination of important matters of state. See Article 41 of the Instrucción reservada, in José Antonio Escudero, Los orígenes del Consejo de Ministros en España (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1979), 2: 29-30
46. Escudero, Los orígenes del Consejo de Ministros en España, 2: 702-3, includes a useful rough definition of "minor" and "serious" crime
47. This was celebrated in the afternoon after the daily court session until 1714 when it was changed at the request of the chaplain "because holding Mass so late was prejudicial to his health." The inmates were expected to attend Mass on Sundays and holidays. Martínez Salazar, Colección, 323
48. and AHN Consejos Suprimidos, Libro de govierno (1714), f. 585 and following
49. In turn they contributed to questioning the ritual of hierarchy with their habitual appeals to the judges that they were chronically underpaid, complaining yearly of the lack of charcoal in the winter. See, for example AHN Consejos Suprimidos, Libro de govierno (1772), f. 51
50. Libro de govierno (1792), f. 1281-82
51. and Libro de govierno (1814), f. 1217-19. The basic salary was twenty-five ducados bi-yearly, with tips of six ducados every Paschal feast day
52. AHN Consejos Suprimidos, Libro de govierno (1779), f. 379
53. and Libro de govierno (1796), f. 986-88, plus indeterminate "cost allowances" from time to time
54. AHN Consejos Suprimidos, Libro de govierno (1799), f. 1214-19
55. The Corregidor was a royally appointed city magistrate in charge of "policing" the city. His decisions, except for misdemeanors, depended on Sala approval. Martínez Salazar, Colección, 323-26
56. My understanding of this issue is based on a reading of Antonio Gramsci, "The Intellectuals," in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 3-23
57. Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation" in From Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 77-82
58. Edward Shils, The Constitution of Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 93-109
59. and David Garland's lucid analysis of the development of social control theory within the criminological corpus in the social sciences, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Modern Social Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
60. Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787 . . . (London: Printed for C. Dilly, in the Poultry, 1791), 1: 132
61. A graphic example of this general Enlightenment concept occurs in Jean-François Peyron's travel narrative, Essais sur l'Espagne (London: P. Elmsly, 1783), 2: 296-97
62. Conde de Fernán-Núñez, Vida de Carlos III, ed. A. Morel-Fatio and A. Paz y Melia (facsimile of the 1898 edition, Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1988), 243
63. Although there is no good study of this phenomenon, Julio Caro Baroja's anthropological study of popular literature is the place to start-for example, Ensayo sobre literature de cordel (Madrid: Istmo, 1990)
64. Romances de ciego (antología) (Madrid: Taurus, 1966)
65. and Realidad y Fantasía en el mundo criminal (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1986)
66. Jorro, Historia del Palacio, 132
67. Juan de Hevia Bolaños, Curia Philipica (Madrid: Ramón Ruiz, 1797), 2: 220-22
68. Andrés Cornejo, Diccionario histórico y forense, 2: 5-7
69. Elizondo, Practica universal forense, 1: 262-63
70. See also Las Siete Partidas del Rey Don Alfonso el Sabio, cotejadas con varios codices antiguos por la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1807), Partida 7, ley 1, título 19
71. Marcos Gutiérrez, Practica criminal de España, vol. 2, Carmen Calzado Case (1787), 212-21, especially 214-16
72. According to Pérez and López's general rules of law, citing Digest L.17.37, "Nemo, qui condemnare potest, absolvere non potest," and Digest L.17.56, "Semper in dubiis benigniora praeferenda sunt," a point repeated in canonical law, Decretal. V.41.2, "Dubia in meliorem partem interpretari debent. . . . Hoc loco nihil aliud nobis praecipi existimo, nisi ut ea facta, quae dubium est quo animo fiant, in meliorem interpretemur." Antonio Xavier Pérez y López, Teatro de la legislación universal de España e Indias: por orden cronológico de sus cuerpos (Madrid: M. González, 1791-98)
73. Hevia Bolaños, Curia Philipica, 221-22
74. I am following John Langbein's thinking in his comparative analysis of European legal systems, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977)
75. For example, Miguel Fernández, a Murcian lemon-seller, provided a character reference for one witness, Marcos Gutiérrez, Practica criminal de España, vol. 2, Carmen Calzado Case (1787), 230-33
76. "Cada uno habla en derecho de su dedo" and "C-Quien tiene una hora de espacio, no muere ahorcado." Gonzalo Correas, Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales y ostras fórmulas comunes de la lengua castellana . . . , ed. Louis Combet (Bordeaux: Institut d'études ibériques et ibéro-américaines de l'Université de Bordeaux, 1967), s.v. "Derecho."
77. "Con esos derechos, se hacen los cohombros tuertos." Correas, Vocabulario, s.v. "derecho."
78. Ironically the author here, Francisco Antonio Elizondo, is one of the sources that did discuss how useful client-lawyer contact had been for him as counsel in various criminal cases before he became a prosecutor. Elizondo, Practica universal forense, 3: 318-19
79. José Blanco White, Cartas de España (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1977), 154
80. Townsend, A Journey through Spain, 3: 22
81. For an example of the reiteration of such government instructions, see AHN Libro de govierno 1.358 (1770), f. 50
82. There is also a discussion in López y Pérez, Teatro de la legislación, 6: 444-48
83. and comments on "Dilaciones," 23: 142-43
84. They were all found guilty and sentenced to two hundred lashes and ten years in an African penal colony. AHN Libro de govierno 1.356 (1768), f. 280-82v
85. Sample count of all cases, AHN, Consejos Suprimidos, Libros de acuerdos 1.046 (1758)
86. 1.050 (1762)
87. 1.066 (1778)
88. 1.070 (1782)
89. 1.086 (1798)
90. 1.090 (1802)
91. Sample count of all cases, AHN Consejos Suprimidos, Libros de acuerdos 1.046 (1758)
92. I am using the term mythology in the current anthropological sense stemming from the work of Edmund Leach, which insists that mytho-history plays a very real part in determining the structures of lived existence. See, for instance, his Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 33-57
93. There is a remarkable similarity on almost all points between the system described in this study and that portrayed by Charles R. Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Cutter reaches the same conclusion that the involvement of the local population in framing judicial culture "dispels the common assumption of an 'absolutist' colonial regime" (147). Echoes of this juridical cultural are to be found in the Comunero revolt of 1781 in Latin America, which John Phelan summarized as "The belief that unjust laws were invalid, and that inherent in the corpus mysticum politicum was the right to some form of popular approval" of statute law
94. See Phelan, The People and the King (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), xviii
95. Compare David B. Young, "Alternative Ideologies of Law: Traditionalists and Reformers in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy," McGill Law Journal 34 (1989): 264-85
96. and idem, "Property and Punishment in the Eighteenth Century: Beccaria and His Critics," The American Journal of Jurisprudence 31 (1986): 121-35
97. A paraphrastic reading of Frederick Charles von Savigny, Of the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence, trans. Abraham Hayward (London: Littlewood & Co., 1831; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1975)