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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