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First Published:
May 2007, 320 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2009, 384 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
Animals on Trial
The idea of canine testimony being accepted in court is not without precedent
(e.g. drug smugglers who are convicted on the evidence of sniffer dogs), but
what about the idea of putting an animal itself on trial?
These days, animals are not tried on the basis
that they lack the ability to make moral judgments and therefore cannot be held
culpable for an act. However, this was not always so. Numerous
cases exist in history, many of them collected in The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals written by
Edward Payson Evans in 1906
and reprinted in the 1980s. For example:
"In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused his death . [T]he sow was dressed in men's clothes and executed on the public square near the city hall at the expense to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the hangman."
In medieval times child-killing swine were a regular hazard and there
are many examples of pigs being put through elaborate trials before being strung
up on gallows as a deterrent to potential wrongdoers (and while they were in
prison they were afforded the same rights under law as humans).
It is not just pigs who fell foul of the law. Other domestic animals and even insects and rodents
are recorded as having had their day in court in medieval times. In fact, the distinguished 16th-century French jurist Bartholomew Chassenée,
is said to have made his reputation for creative argument and persistent
advocacy on the strength of his representation of some rats, which had been put
on trial on the charge of having "feloniously eaten up and wantonly destroyed the
barley crop of that province."
Apparently, as recently as 1906 in Switzerland, two men and a dog stood trial
for murder. Both men received life sentences but the dog was condemned to death.
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