The judges sitting on the dais fanned themselves in the heat of an early summer. Large windows were open to the air and, as the time was midday, the sun shone slightly in only through the south-facing windows and heated the air throughout the old courthouse building.
There were four men sitting in the prisoners’ cage in the courtroom. They were a mixture of young and middle-aged, all from diverse parts of Sicily, all accused of insurrection against the crown. They had been rounded up by the polizia and brought to Palermo where they were kept in jail for four months already. Their pleas had been heard and the evidence presented a month earlier, and now they stood impatiently waiting for the sitting judge to issue his pronouncement.
poliziaThese men – Giuseppe de Felice Giuffrida from Cata
