| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
QUITO, Ecuador-The prosecutor stands to deliver her opening statement in the case. She wears a tight, electric-blue dress that comes to mid-thigh. Standing on her matching stiletto heels, she turns toward the three-judge panel at the front of the room and lays out her case against the defendant. The defendant, she begins, had cut down an ancient and valuable tree, thereby committing a crime against the property owner and the state. Her opening statement is short, mostly read from the page in front of her. The judges, two middle-aged men and a young woman in her early 30s, listen intently from their seats behind a folding table. They face the audience, crammed into two narrow rows at the back of the room, and are flanked to the left by the prosecution team and to the right by the defendant and his lawyer, all seated at creaky folding tables. The defendant-a dark-skinned, middle-aged man in a short-sleeve button-down blue shirt-sits listlessly, his arms folded across his chest. His lawyer takes occasional notes during the opening statement, but mostly looks down at the thin binder before him. Everyone in the room-audience, judges, and lawyers-sits in folding chairs. Next to the judges is the clerk of the court at a computer. Besides that, the room is barren.
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