Criticism of The Trial
According to critics, the outcome of the trial was due to the underhanded conduct of the government and to the obvious rift between the lawyers and the accused. Throughout the trial Riel's lawyers ignored his advice and refused his requests (including the request to cross-examine the witnesses himself), and they threatened to abandon him halfway through the procedure. Riel insisted that had the witnesses been properly cross-examined, it would have been established that his men had been attacked first. "Happily they were when they appeared and showed their teeth to devour," he said. "All I was ready. That is what is called my crime of high treason, and for which they hold me to-day."
Read more about this topic: Trial Of Louis Riel
Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism and/or trial:
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“A man who has no office to go to—I don’t care who he is—is a trial of which you can have no conception.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)