Trial by Combat
Trial by combat was recently brought back into the recent memory with the book and TV series Game of Thrones. Cersei Lannister hires a champion named The Mountain to fight on her behalf. This actually did happen in Medieval Europe whenever two people had a disagreement, or someone had to face being accused with a crime. In Great Britain, records were kept whenever two men decided to duel in order to resolve a conflict. Sometimes, both men would die, but apparently, someone could back out of the duel if they chose to. The fear of dying usually helped people put things into perspective, and settled their differences out of court.
Like most of these trials, this was not very logical, because strength and athleticism have nothing to do with innocence. A rich person could also hire the strongest person in the area to represent them, as well. In fact, if someone was accused of being a murderer, they are actually more likely to win in a battle to the death. However, like every other trial, they put faith in God, and in stories like David and Goliath, where even the smallest man can overtake a giant, so long as they have God on their side.
The use of trial by combat finally became illegal in 1819. A man named Abraham Thornton raped and killed a young virgin woman named Mary Ashford, and then dumped her body at the bottom of a ditch in the woods. He was acquitted of the crime. Even though he admitted to having sex with Mary Ashford that night, Thornton had an alibi that placed him somewhere else during the estimated time the crime supposedly took place. So they claimed that Mary must have committed suicide from the shame of having sex out of wedlock. For everyone in the town, this was a totally outraged. They knew the kind of person Thornton was, and they knew young Mary would never do that to herself. Everyone knew that he was a cold blooded killer, but there just wasn’t enough evidence to prove it.
Mary’s brother, William Ashford, knew that this was totally unfair to let this monster walk free. He gathered new evidence for the case, hired a really good lawyer, and wanted justice for his sister’s death. So he tried to take him to trial a second time, knowing that he had enough evidence to prove the man’s guilt. This made Thornton furious, so he called up his right to trial by combat, which was still technically on the books as a real option. He demanded he and William Ashford should have a battle to the death. Since he knew Thornton was an actual murderer, he backed off, and the man went free a second time.
After this incident, the government could see that this legal system was a total disaster. Today, there are laws against “double jeopardy”, which makes it impossible to try the same person for the same crime twice. It also eliminated trial by combat.