Thankfully, many of the laws we have today are much kinder then when they were first originated. In early medieval Europe and England, disputed criminal charges were often decided by what was called back then an ordeal. In a trial by fire, the accused person would have to either place his or her hand in boiling water, or have a red hot piece of iron laid in his or her open hand causing a major wound. If the wound did not heal properly, that meant the person was guilty. This was based on the principle of divine intervention and the belief that divine forces would not allow an innocent person to be harmed.
In a trial by combat, the defendant could challenge his accuser to a duel, with the outcome determining the legitimacy of the accusation. However, the accuser had the option of finding an alternate to fight in his place. There had been earlier forms of trial by jury for centuries.
Beginning around B. In the 6th century B. It was this system that was most likely the first form of juries in England, with it arriving on British shores with the Roman Conquest.
William Blackstone, the great historian of English common law, considered the Frankish Inquest, developed in A. Less than two centuries later, the Magna Carta affirmed that trial by jury would be the standard for all subjects of the English—and later British—crown. The British Bill of Rights Unfortunately for the British people, their right to trial by jury began to break down in the 16th century.
King Henry VIII declared himself supreme ruler of Great Britain, and part of his strategy to retain that ultimate power was the suppression and intimidation of the courts. Its court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, no juries, no witnesses and no appeals. In a decision, the U. The Star Chamber continued under the Stuart kings into the 17th century. Although the English Civil War overthrew the monarchy in , the abuses of both the Star Chamber and other limits on trial by jury continued under Oliver Cromwell.
The truce between the crown and Parliament was short lived, however, as Charles II began to suspend laws passed Parliament and continued to infringe on the liberties guaranteed to the British people in the Magna Carta. Charles II even went so far as to repeatedly dissolve Parliament when it convened. After his wife gave birth to a son, Protestant members of Parliament feared that Great Britain would again become a Catholic monarchy beholden to Rome.
Parliament offered the British throne to William and Mary to rule jointly, but after nearly years of abuses, the British people wanted the assurance that the rights guaranteed to them in the Magna Carta—including the right to trial by jury—would not be taken from them again. It was signed in In the early s, British subjects, whose rights were threatened at home, began sailing for America.
The rights that they had been guaranteed in the Magna Carta, including trial by jury, were reasserted in the colonial charters. The right to trial by jury was included in the First Charter of Virginia, which was drafted in Great Britain in —and that right was guaranteed in all subsequent colonial charters. The British rulers suppressed the right in order to limit challenges against British authority and quell calls for American independence.
Almost immediately, efforts to limit trial by jury became a focal point for revolutionaries. The fervor continued into , when the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in After the Conquest of , the Old English customs of proof were repeated anew and in more detailed fashion by the Normans, but the only notable innovation of the ordeal by the conquerors was the introduction of the trial by battle.
Trials by ordeal became more rare over the Late Middle Ages, often replaced by confessions extracted under torture, but the practice was discontinued only in the 16th century. Trial by boiling oil has been practiced in villages in certain parts of West Africa, such as Togo.
There are two main alternatives of this trial. In one version, the accused parties are ordered to retrieve an item from a container of boiling oil, with those who refuse the task being found guilty.
There were several forms of ordeal in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. The hand was then bound up and examined after several days. Trial by combat remained in English law until , although its use had dwindled over the centuries.
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