Before the Suprema had rendered the tribunals mere agencies for collecting evidence and attending to the formalities of trials, the consulta de fe may occasionally have been of service in preventing or diminishing injustice. Incidents related above show that the consultors formed opinions of their own, and that the votes were often far from unanimous. This was encouraged by the routine of voting, in which the consultors voted first and the senior inquisitor last, although doubtless, when there had been a preliminary discussion, the views of the inquisitors had been made known. Occasionally we meet with debates in which each member of the consults accompanies his vote with an exposition of his reasons, and sometimes even with elaborate written opinions, showing a conscientious expenditure of thought and labor. Unfortunately, doubts and disagreements generally were compromised by recourse to torture, after which the consulta would be reconvened to formulate the definitive sentence.
Not the least cruel feature of the inquisitorial trial was the interminable delay to which the victim was commonly exposed. In ordinary criminal practice, especially in capital cases, the accused may seek perhaps to postpone the evil day, but in the Inquisition, where he was denied all communication with the outside world, and was kept in ignorance as to the progress of his own case, the agony of suspense concerning himself and those dear to him during dreary months and years was, in itself, a most severe and protracted punishment. This was thoroughly understood, not only from the repeated despairing cries of prisoners to have their cases despatched, but from the habitual promise of such despatch held out as an inducement for confession. The slow torture of delay was a well-understood device of the Old Inquisition to procure confession, when five, ten, or twenty years' interval between arrest and sentence was not infrequent,[201] but, except in special cases, this would not seem to be the motive in Spain. It is rather attributable to callous indifference and the habit of procrastination. The prisoner was presumably guilty and no good Christian need waste sympathy on the sufferings, mental and bodily, of a heretic too pertinacious for confession and conversion.