The course of proceedings is stated to have been as follows: prayers were first offered up for the Divine guidance, the prisoner was introduced and identified, the written depositions were read over, a narrative of the facts was given by the president, the prisoner was called upon to reply to the charges alleged against him, the witnesses for the crown and for the prisoner were heard respectively, the counsel for the prosecution called upon the court to condemn the prisoner, and was replied to by the counsel for the defence; the discussion was then declared closed, and after the judges had retired and deliberated, their sentence was given.
All the facts I have been able to put together about the case are gathered from this sentence and from those of the courts of appeal.

These sentences, however, are extremely lengthy, very indistinct, and encumbered with a great deal of legal phraseology.

As they are all alike I may as well give an abstract of this one as a specimen of all.

The sentence begins with the following moral remarks: "Frequent paternal admonitions, alleged scarcity of daily food, and the evil counsels of others, had alienated the heart of the prisoner to such an extent, that feelings of affection and reverence towards his own father, Venanzio, had given place to contempt, disobedience, ill-will, and even worse." No one, however, would have supposed that he "was capable of becoming a parricide, as was too clearly proved on the fatal night in question." After these preliminary reflections comes a narration of the facts much in the words in which I have given them.

This is followed by a statement of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence, consisting of a number of verbose paragraphs, each beginning, "considering that," &c.