2023-07-28 21:30:00
Time.news – Whatever the social norms of an era, whether the person responsible for a crime is the individual committing it or the demon who has taken possession of it, good justice must establish proof of guilt before any conviction.
The conviction of an innocent person is a tragedy that seriously undermines the safety of litigants and the confidence they have in the judicial institution. For its decisions to be accepted, justice must be fair, and arbitrary convictions could have dramatic consequences.
Over the centuries, the good judge has therefore endeavored to develop strategies to establish proof of the guilt of a defendant. As the problem is delicate, the methods may have proved to be imperfect. Those of a bygone era may seem surprising to contemporary litigants. And there are not only good judges.
Nevertheless, the question of proof has always been at the heart of judicial questioning.
NORMANDY – 1077 | HOW TO SOLVE AN EVIDENCE PROBLEM
The Chevalier Guillaume de Pantoul is accused of murder. Wrongly according to him and he intends to prove his innocence. He therefore asks to be judged at the Court of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and his suzerain.
The duke listens to the defendant and his accusers, but fails to find evidence that would support either position.
The problem must be solved and to avoid any miscarriage of justice, the noble Norman decides to get help from the one who cannot be wrong: God. He therefore orders the test of red-hot iron.
The knight is forced to grab a piece of iron heated to incandescence. The hand is then bandaged and examined a few days later. The burns appear to be healing, they are not infected.
The conclusion is obvious: Guillaume de Pantoul is innocent! God would not have allowed the healing of a culprit!
SOISSON – 1114 | A FATAL METHOD TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF PROOF
In 1114, Clement, a modest peasant from the region of Soisson, had the misfortune to be accused by his neighbors of the crime of witchcraft. The bishop of the diocese immediately seized on this serious affair – we do not joke with such things – and devoted himself to the necessary investigations.
He therefore questions Clément and hears many testimonies. Alas, there again, establishing the proof of the crime proves to be difficult. The prelate does not manage to bring together sufficiently convincing elements to establish the innocence or the guilt of Clement.
To avoid any error, the bishop opted for the same infallible means as the Duke of Normandy, recourse to God. Unfortunately for Clément, instead of choosing the ordeal of red-hot iron, the monk orders that of water. “Unfortunately” because, according to our contemporary criteria, this ordeal never ended well for the accused.
The peasant is led to the edge of the pond where the whole village has gathered. He is then thrown into the water, his wrists tied.
The crowd then notices that it does not sink, but on the contrary floats. So we end up taking poor Clément out of the pond, half-drowned, and the verdict falls: water is a pure element that throws all those with a dirty conscience to its surface, and man is therefore very guilty. crimes with which he is charged.
He is immediately declared a heretic and led to the stake under the vindictiveness of the villagers! Thank God, justice is done!
Being innocent wouldn’t have reserved a much more enviable fate for him, you say to yourself? For the litigants of the 12th century, of course it was! If he had been innocent, this wizard Clement would have had the chance to immediately join paradise! As it happened, that filthy heretic had won an immediate one-way ticket to hell! With a foretaste, the stake!
FRANCE – XIIIth/XIVth/XVth CENTURY | WHEN SEARCHING FOR PROOF COULD HAVE SAVED MILLIONS OF LIVES!
In 1233, a papal bull decreed that black cats were servants of the Devil.
It must be said that their teeth are reputed to be venomous, their flesh poisonous and their hair deadly if inadvertently swallowed. In short, filthy beasts! In addition, they like to wander at night, have sparkling eyes capable of piercing the darkness and are the favorite allies of witches! And if any doubt persists, it should be remembered that a healing power like the one with which they are endowed is certainly not Catholic: sucking the blood from the tail of a cat previously cut off guarantees immediate recovery even after the most serious falls. brutal! Only here it is: all this is only an allegation and the Devil hides in the details… The allegation does not prove it.
Like other vermin at the time, these diabolical mammals are subject to trials where they are judged as people. And since they are accused not only of being complacent accomplices of witches, but in addition of participating in the spread of the plague, I would as much like to tell you that it’s no joke!
The effects of the papal bull of 1233 were reinforced in the 14th century by Pope Innocent VII (1336-1415) who demanded an intensification of the hunt for satanic cats. Pope Innocent VIII (1432 – 1492) drives the point home by writing, in 1484, a papal bull ordering that witches and their cats be burned alive.
These successive papal ires increase the number of executions of felines to several million. We don’t bother looking for proof of the misdeeds: being a cat is considered proof in itself.
Pope Innocent should have given more importance to the presumption of innocence of quadrupeds and endeavored to scrupulously seek proof of their guilt. Cats were completely innocent of spreading diseases that were deadly to humans.
And these arbitrary executions of felines will have an unexpected (and unknown at the time) consequence for man:
In the 14th century, a pandemic broke out which was to last three centuries and which ravaged humanity: the Black Death or Great Plague. And I can tell you that this one is not “asymptomatic” in most cases! She is really dangerous! From 1346 to 1350 alone, 25 million people died from it, around a third of the European population.
However, the bubonic plague spread because of rat fleas which, unlike cats, were absolutely not suspected at the time. The massacre of the felines has resulted in an intensification of the epidemic which would have lasted less long if they had been left to indulge quietly in one of their favorite occupations: hunting rodents for gastronomic purposes!
Instead, they shot themselves in the foot by accusing them quite unfairly of being responsible for the plague. Like what, the miscarriage of justice always has serious consequences for society!
The peasants, who stubbornly kept their cats, which rendered them many services by predating rapidly invading rodents that devoured food, were largely spared the plague…
LORRAINE – END OF THE XVIIITH CENTURY | LACK OF RIGOR AND JUDICIAL ERROR
Without causing, indirectly, millions of deaths, an expeditious finding of guilt can have a serious, even irremediable, consequence for its victim, and dangerous for the confidence of the litigant in justice: the miscarriage of justice.
Voltaire was not mistaken, who fiercely denounced the lack of rigor of judges who were not very demanding in the field of proof and who sent innocent people to death on the basis of questionable reasoning.
We owe it to the writer and philosopher to know the story of poor Martin, a farmer father of seven children, whose only crime was to have his coat stolen by a highway robber.
At the end of the 18th century, Martin is sleeping with his whole family while a wealthy traveler is murdered and robbed by a brigand wearing a farmer’s coat. A witness recognizes the suit and Martin is arrested.
His explanations, his honorable past, the fact that no wealth is found in his home, nothing will convince a judge in need of a result, and therefore guilty, of his innocence. The fact that the witness to the crime claims not to recognize the face of the farmer should have tipped the judicial scales in favor of the accused, but the judge follows a curious reasoning: Martin naturally expresses his relief, and the magistrate, rather than d Seeing there the natural joy of the innocent who thinks that the truth is established, concludes his guilt. It is, according to him, the satisfaction of a culprit who thinks of escaping a just sanction that is expressed!
Martin is condemned to ordinary and extraordinary torture and to die on the wheel. He appealed, but the criminal chamber of La Tournelle, competent in the matter, was overwhelmed and validated the conviction without examining the file.
The farmer is therefore tortured and then dies on the wheel.
A week later, the real culprit, about to be executed in turn for another crime, confesses to the murder for which Martin was convicted.
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