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None of these rights were enjoyed under the procedure in effect during the Spanish régime. A man was prosecuted without being notified of the charges against him, and he was only made aware of the case against him after the sumario. When all of the evidence of the prosecution had been taken the accused was heard in his own defence.
Although he had the right to compel witnesses for the prosecution to ratify over their signatures the evidence against him given during the sumario, as the defence of the majority of the accused was in the hands of attorneys de officio they nearly always renounced this privilege of the defendant, and, as has already been said, bail was not admitted in any grave offence during the trial.
Owing many times to the inactivity of the judge or of the prosecuting attorney, to the great amount of work which weighed down the courts for actions were begun when there was knowledge of the commission of the crime, although the perpetrators were not known and by the manipulations at other times of the private accuser to whose interest it was to harm the accused by delaying the sumario, this period was often made to extend over years and years.
The cause would be commenced, either de officio, by the judge who had a knowledge of the crime, or by the prosecuting attorney, or by virtue of private accusation on the part of the person aggrieved. The case once started, the investigations made during the period known as the sumario were conducted in the absence of the accused.
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