Royal Courts (Curia)

Justices in Eyre   Justiciars    Ad omnia placita

Henry II (1178) "While he was staying in England, the King enquired whether the justices whom he had set up in England had treated people fairly.  He learned that the country and the people were much injured by the number of justices .  .  . "

King's Court  Exchequer   Court of Common Pleas (Westminister)

 

Trial by Jury          

Twelfth Century:  Jury for property cases (Writs)
                                Jury for criminal cases (Assize of Clarendon)

c. 18, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215

Jury as a new mode of proof

Writ of 1219 to the Justices of the Eyre
1.  Major crimes, robbery, murder:  prison
2.  Medium crimes: exile
3.  Lesser crimes: fines

At first a jury trial was voluntary --- "put himself on the country"
Prison forte et dure  -- peine forte et dure

Reading:  K. Pennington, Criminal Procedure in the Ius commune

Magna Carta (1215)

38. No bailiff for the future shall, upon his own unsupported complaint, put anyone to his "law", without credible witnesses brought for this purposes.

39. No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

40. To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.

 

The transition from an indicting jury (Jury of Presentment) to a deciding jury (Petit Jury) was a very slow one, and there was a fairly extended period in which judges were not bound by a jury's verdict.  The idea of an impartial jury only took root in the fifteenth century.

Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Criminal Trials

1. No witnesses for the defense

2. Defendant could not testify in his defense

3. If he did not enter an plea --- peine forte et dure

Comparison to the Ius commune

 

Mark Twain's Views on Juries