Tag: murder

Witchcraft – Bonus Episode

August 7, 2022 historyofmurderpodcast_st5s3k Uncategorized 0 Comments

 

 

 

This week’s episode is a bonus episode on the history of witchcraft in English law. We give murder a rest in this episode and focus exclusively on the rise and fall of witchcraft in England in the 17th century instead. The episode starts by looking at King James I’s weird personal relationship with witch-hunting. We then see how his son, Charles I, was a bit skeptical about the whole thing, and how he fostered skepticism towards witch-hunting until his career was cut short (so to speak) and civil war broke out.

We then turn to the story of the so-called Witchfinder general, Matthew Hopkins, and his colleague, John Stearne, who were responsible for the executions of over one-hundred alleged witches during the English Civil War.

Matthew Hopkins, the so-called Witchfinder general

L0000812 Matthew Hopkins, Witch-finder..Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images.images@wellcome.ac.uk.http://wellcomeimages.org.

Finally, we’ll see that after the war, judges began to reject the idea that witchcraft could be proved in court, and how witchcraft prosecutions died out before witchcraft beliefs did.

Don’t worry if you are missing the history of homicide – we’ll be back with an episode on infanticide next time. 

 

 

 

Episode 5: Felony Murder and Constructive Malice

October 27, 2021 historyofmurderpodcast_st5s3k Uncategorized 0 Comments

 

Today we take a whirlwind tour through the controversial topic of felony murder and constructive malice!

In today’s episode, we ask whether it is murder when someone kills someone else unintentionally but during the course of a serious crime (or a felony). Normally killing has to be intentional to qualify as murder – but does the criminal context change this rule? For instance, is it murder when a robber accidentally shoots a cashier during an armed robbery? What about when a kidnapper smothers someone by accident while kidnapping them?

Some modern common law jurisdictions are deeply divided on this topic, and we’ll see why after looking at felony murder’s chaotic history. We’ll see early-modern common law superstars butt heads over obscure examples (is it murder when you go poaching but your arrow goes astray and kills a boy lurking in a nearby bush?). We’ll also see how an early-eighteenth century attempt to clear things up just muddles it even more and ultimately gives us the term “felony murder.” We’ll ask what’s so constructive about malice anyways. And finally, we’ll see how theory and practice never quite seem to match up in this bizarre area of the law.

Warning: modern terms for what we’re discussing today vary, particularly in the USA. Depending on the jurisdiction, you can find felony murder under a variety of names and degrees.

Got any comments on felony murder? Think I didn’t come down hard enough on the doctrine, or conversely, that I was too critical of it? Send me your thoughts on our contact page or @murderhistorian on Twitter!

Be sure to subscribe on your podcast app. Click here to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @murderhistorian.

Sources and notes:

  • Guyora Binder’s article, “The Origins of American Felony Murder Rules,” Stanford Law Review, Oct., 2004, Vol. 57, No. 1 pp. 59-208 is the fullest history imaginable on this topic. If you’re wondering what happened in the 19th century, go to Binder!
  • See Glanville Williams, “Constructive Malice Revived, “The Modern Law Review,” Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov., 1960), pp. 605-629 for an explanation of why DPP v Smith was wrongly decided.
  • Felony Murder as a First Degree Offense: An Anachronism Retained, 66 Yale L.J. (1957) is interesting, especially for its description of how felony murder became a first-degree murder offence in early post-Revolutionary USA
  • If you’re wondering about the common-law felony “mayhem” (as I certainly was), check out this recent blog post from legal historian Gwen Seabourne

 

 

Episode 2: Medieval Murder and the Birth of Manslaughter

September 15, 2021 historyofmurderpodcast_st5s3k Uncategorized 0 Comments

Welcome to our first fully historical episode of the History of Murder Podcast!

In today’s episode, we look back at the history of murder law in medieval England. We’ll see a major problem with it: there’s only one punishment for all kinds of killing, and that punishment is death. Do we really want to punish everyone who kills someone else with death? Is it fair to punish everyone in the same way? Don’t we want to punish the serial killer more than we want to punish the random person who killed someone during a bar fight? These problems give rise to the birth of manslaughter, but not before we take a detour through one of the weirdest concepts in the common law, benefit of clergy.

The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Not only a classic medieval murder, but a pivotal one for the development of manslaughter (via benefit of clergy).

 

Sources

In this episode, I rely heavily on the following article by Thomas Green and take the Walter and Thomas example from it. Note that their case is a mere footnote in this enormous and very rich article! 

Thomas A. Green, “The Jury and the English Law of Homicide, 1200-1600,” Mich. L. Rev. 74 (1976): 413-99. Available for download here. 

You can find John Salisbury’s case reported by Plowden in The Commentaries, Or Reports of Edmund Plowden, Containing Divers Cases Upon Matters of Law, Argued and Adjudged in the Several Reigns of King Edward VI., Queen Mary, King and Queen Philip and Mary, and Queen Elizabeth [1548-1579] (Part 1), available here on Google books (pp 100-101 of the original text, but note the strange pagination).

For a great overview of benefit of clergy and the early years of manslaughter, check out the introductory chapter to Kesselring, K. J. 2019. Making Murder Public : Homicide in Early Modern England, 1480-1680 (version First edition.) First ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.