This blog post presents the reader with an overview of bizarre practices in courts throughout the centuries. It then looks at three iconic cases in the Northern Territory.
Ancient Greece
In ancient Greece, municipalities had a Prytaneum, an administrative centre. Here, throughout classical antiquity, animals and inanimate things were subjected to legal trials. These legal processes may have originated in agricultural festivals where an axe was put on trial as the slayer of an ox, in a highly complex ritual.
The athlete Theagenes used to go to his bronze statue on the island of Thasos and whip it as a way of punishing opponents in athletic competitions. The statue, tilted off-balance by the whipping, fell onto Theagenes and killed him. The statue was prosecuted for murder by
Theagenes’ sons. The Thasians found the statue guilty and cast it into the sea, beyond their borders.
The Prytaneum was the Town Hall of every Greek town, as much as the Lower Court is in contemporary Alice Springs. It represented the values and unity of the community. One of the important functions of the Prytaneum was as a location to hold murder trials. Many
Greek writers mention these trials. “If a murderer was unknown or could not be found, he was nevertheless tried; also lifeless things, such as stones, beams, pieces of iron, etc., which had caused the death of a man by falling upon him, were tried here, as well as animals which had similarly been the cause of death.”
The Athenian statesman and orator Demosthenes said in his oration Kατα Aριστoκρατoυς (Against Aristocrates but who, even if guilty, is at all events a being, should be adjudged without a hearing and be given to his accusers.”
Plato gives the law in full. He exempts its applicability to thunderbolts or “other fatal darts from gods” and makes no distinction between “men falling upon a thing or the thing falling upon him.” Plato also refers to animals subject to trial in the Prytaneum: “And if a beast of
burden or other animal cause the death of anyone, except in case of anything of that kind happening in the public contests, the kinsmen of the deceased shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and the wardens of the country, such, and so many as the kinsmen appoint, shall try the cause, and let the beast, when condemned, be slain by them and cast beyond the borders.”
To understand the issues raised by cases like this, we must take into account the Greek view of murder. The second case (and probably the third) was merely an amplification of the first; if the human murderer could not be found, the thing or animal that had been the agent
in the slaying, if it could be found, had to be tried. Not only had a crime been committed, the community had been defiled. Some person or thing was to blame and must be punished to expunge the pollution. A boy was killed by running into the path of a javelin
that had been hurled by a youth practising javelin-throwing in the gymnasium. The boy's father accused the youth of accidental homicide. The question to be decided was, who
(of Sparta)): “If a stone or a piece of wood or iron or anything similar falls and strikes a man, and the person who threw the thing is unknown, but the thing which killed the man is known and in the hands of the judges, it is tried at the Prytaneum. If it is not right that inanimate and senseless things when under such a charge, be left untried, it is surely impious that a man who is possibly innocent was to blame: the boy, the youth, or the javelin? If it was either of the first two, the case would be referred to the court of the Palladium, where cases of unpremeditated murder were tried: if it was the javelin, the case would be assigned to the Prytaneum.
Ancient Persia
The ancient Persians treated animals as responsible beings. “In the religious laws of the Vendidad, if a mad dog was not muzzled and, without barking, wounded a man or sheep, it was decreed that it be punished for the wounding as if it had tried to commit murder with premeditation; this punishment took the form of a progressive mutilation corresponding with the number of persons or beasts bitten, beginning with the loss of the ears and ending with
the amputation of the tail. Insanity could not be pleaded for the dog in exculpation of his deed.”
In the Bible
The book of Exodus recounts how the Hebrews put on trial an ox that gored a human to death. The ox was to be stoned, and its flesh could not be eaten. The owner was acquitted unless it was shown that the ox had been in the habit of goring and had not been restrained; in this case, both ox and owner were put to death.
Middle Ages – Europe
In medieval Europe, insects and rodents and cocks were brought before the court to face charges. “All kinds of animals were condemned and put to death. The list of prisoners comprises a miscellaneous crew, including asses, beetles, bloodsuckers, bulls, caterpillars, cockchafers, cocks, cows, dogs, dolphins, eels, field mice, flies, goats, grasshoppers, horses, locusts, mice, moles, rats, serpents, sheep, slugs, snails, swine, termites, turtledoves, weevils, wolves, worms and nondescript vermin.”
We have records from the ninth century showing that domestic animals, such as pigs and dogs, were tried in the criminal courts like men and, if found guilty, were put to death, while wild animals of the noxious sort, such as rats and locusts were tried in the ecclesiastical courts.
Their punishment was either death or excommunication Their advocate, Chassenee, pleaded that the summons had been too local and of too individual a character and that not some but all the rats of the diocese should be summoned. In consequence, the bishop summoned every rat to appear on a certain day; but still, no rats appeared.
Chassenee argued that because the rats were spread over many villages, their migration required more time. Delay in the proceedings was granted, but still… no rats! This time their absence was excused by their advocate “on the ground that a summons implied full protection to the parties summoned while coming and going; but that his clients, though anxious to appear, were afraid of their natural enemies the cats, which belonged to the
plaintiffs. He, therefore, demanded that the plaintiffs be bonded under penalty to keep their cats from frightening the rats. This plea seemed to the court to be valid, but
the plaintiffs demurred, and in consequence the period for the appearance of the rats was adjourned sine die and judgment was given by default.” (Woodburn Hyde 1916,
p. 707 University of Pennsylvania Law Review).
In Savignysur-Etang, in Bourgogne, France, in 1457, a sow, together with her six pigs, was charged for murdering and partly devouring an infant. The sow was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, though her piglets were pardoned, because of their youth and innocence and the fact that their mother had set them a bad example, and most importantly, because proof of and banishment by formal decree.
The legal annals of the ecclesiastical court of Autun in France in 1522 record a trial that was won by the jurist Bartholomew Chassenee. A group of rats were brought to trial for having eaten and destroyed local barley crops, but the rats failed to appear on the day of the trial.
their complicity could not be found. (Woodburn Hyde 1916, p. 707 University of Pennsylvania Law Review). Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice,
contains the following lines:
“Thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for humnan slaughter
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet.”
Men found guilty of the crime of bestiality, offensa cujus nominatio crimen est, were put to death with the animal. At Montpellier in France, in 1565,, a man and a mule were burnt alive for this offence; as the mule objected, its feet were first cut off. This type of punishment was also inflicted in the US. In the Cotton Mather records of June 6, 1662, in New Haven, Connecticut, a man by the name of Potter was hanged for this crime together with a cow, two heifers, three sheep, and two sows. The legislation that made this possible was based on the Mosaic law.12 (Woodburn Hyde 1916, pp. 709, University of Pennsylvania Law Review).
The football fans of Darlington, in the north-west of England, are reported to chant “Who hung the monkey?” when their team is playing Hartlepool United (which is also known as the “Monkeyhangers”). This refers to the local legend that during the Napoleonic Wars, a monkey dressed in a French army uniform – the only survivor from a shipwreck – was washed up onto the beach at Hartlepool, (The monkey had presumably been a ship’s
pet). Lacking the knowledge to distinguish a monkey from a Frenchman, the local inhabitants held a trial. The monkey proved unable to provide satisfactory answers in
its defence, was found guilty of being a French spy, and was sentenced to death and hanged on the beach.
Outside Europe
In Eastern Bengal, if a man was killed by a tiger, his family was socially disgraced until the offending tiger was killed and eaten. If it could not be found, the punishment was
carried out vicariously by the slaying of another tiger. This practice was still in place when Woodburn wrote his book The Persecution of Animals and Lifeless Things in 1916.
Among the Bogos of Northern Abyssinia, an ox or any domestic animal which had caused the death of a man had to be be slain. The Malagasy of Madagascar never killed a crocodile except in retaliation. The Dyaks of Borneo never attacked an alligator unless it had destroyed one of their tribe. In this case revenge was “the sacred duty of the victim's relatives, and the man-eating alligator is supposed to be pursued by a righteous Nemesis; when one is caught, it must be the guilty one, for the fates would not permit an innocent one to suffer.” As recorded by Woodburn, the contemporary code of people in Malacca
required that a buffalo or head of cattle that gored a man to death should itself be killed; the owner was not held responsible.
Among the Mangbetu of Central Africa (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), animals were punished for various offences.
In East Africa, a dog was publicly scourged for entering a mosque, and among the Maori of New Zealand, pigs were put to death for trampling a sacred place. These practices were still in place when Woodburn wrote his book The Persecution of Animals and Lifeless Things in 1916. Such practices continued well into the 20th century: in Tennessee, also in 1916, an elephant called Mary was tried for murder and hanged from a railway crane.
This tragic fact became the inspiration for the title of the book The Elephant's Tooth, Crime in Alice Springs. You can buy it here:
https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-elephant-s-tooth-crime-in-alice-springs-suzanne-visser/book/9780645654738.html
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