The Verdict

In a Court of Justice, there are always those figures easily recognized. The judge, the lawyers, with wigs and robes, the dead serious prosecutor, the innocent looking and well suited accused in his particular assigned seat, the reporters taking notes .... and Mr. Josep Andreu, following attentively the theatre of life. For more than half his life, 46 years to be exact, he has seen hundreds of crimes being explained in minute details, how witnesses being questioned and give their versions, helpful or confusing, how lawyers defend and argue, how evidences are collected and presented, analysed, contradicted, and finally coming together, sorted out the entanglements, threshing out husks, and getting to the grains.

 

Josep Andreu will be 80 in August. Retired now. Back in 1961, he read in the paper that a woman was on trail for having murdered her partner and his son., and the prosecution was asking for her the death penalty. He decided to attend the trail to see how the case develop and what the outcome might be. (In the end, the woman was condemned to 30 years prison). From then on, he has been attending every High Court trial of important crimes. 

 

At that time he worked in a company where there were 2 shifts of employees. He always tried his best to take the afternoon shift, or changed with his colleagues when he couldn't, so that he could attend the trials in the mornings. Then a hasty sandwich and went to work. Having retired when he was 65, he has now no more such time problem. 

 

He told the interviewer that he went because he wished to learn new things, like a doctor who examines all aspects, not just to give medicine to cure the sickness, but to find out the cause, and how it develops to become an illness. He believes that everything is transcendental, from words of the witnesses to the gestures of the court. For more than 4 decades, he has acquired so much knowledge and dexterity, some lawyers have commented or discussed with him on certain cases, as if he was one of the team. 

 

He punctuated that the high point is to predict the final outcome of each case, and proudly remarked that he was right more times than was wrong. He doesn't have the exact number of his attendance, many hundreds they must be. In 1994 alone he had visited 248 times, including 3 with the petition of death penalty. During nearly half a century, he reckoned he has learned a great deal, especially to respect, and to have an open mind. He also admitted having shed tears a few times.

 

People's hobbies can be very interesting, not simply because of the great variety of things they do or what objects they collect, but their choice often reveal their character, even what makes a person that particular individual he is. Nor just what they do for relaxation, or for accumulating unusual things they desire, for pleasure or for investment. 

 

I think what Andreu collects is knowledge of human mind and behaviour, of others and of himself, to acquire more understanding, tolerance and, as he said, respect of one another as a reward. Unlike other collectors, he hasn't got an ostentatious collection to show off.

 

He will continue to go to the Tribunal Court everyday he said, with a great big smile on his face.

Tags:Justice,Verdict,Evidence,Witness

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