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Abstract Accounts of the post-Lateran IV period tend to emphasize the different procedural paths taken by English courts, which adopted jury trial for felony cases, and continental European courts, which turned toward inquisitorial methods and a greater reliance on confession. This article argues that the fact-finding strategies of the two systems had more in common than may appear at first glance due, in part, to a shared cultural reservoir exemplified by the strategy of circumstantial inquiry employed by confessors. Rather than focusing on the point of greatest difference, the trial jury, this article examines pre-trial investigative processes to emphasize shared jurisprudential priorities.

In medieval English texts, a common refrain, drawn from scripture, urged that only God could search the mind and heart of a sinner, and that those who judge others might face their own grave judgment on the last day. This sits uneasily with the task of issuing a felony verdict, a burden placed squarely upon the shoulders of lay jurors after the Fourth Lateran Council's effective abolition of trial by ordeal in 1215. Nevertheless, jurors did sit in judgment upon their neighbors, and evidence suggests that they were not merely assessing outward conduct but also the state of a defendant's heart and mind which, like the hand of a proband in the era of trial by ordeal, might be declared fair or foul. This essay explores how techniques for unearthing intentionality through circumstantial inquiry—techniques developed in the context of classical rhetoric and adapted for priests hearing confessions—were put to use by coroners and others tasked with investigating crimes. This, in turn, aided jurors in the perilous, even audacious, task of judging alleged felons, ultimately determining who should be acquitted and who should face the gallows.

Within a few years of Lateran IV’s prohibition of priestly involvement in trial by ordeal, England moved definitively toward a criminal justice system based on trial by jury. This paper will explore the underlying assumptions of king, council and justices at the time of the criminal trial jury’s introduction (c. 1220) as to the jury’s precise function within a prosecutory system that countenanced only capital sanctions for those convicted of felony. Unearthing these assumptions will require careful consideration of earlier ordeal procedure and other kinds of juries in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, most notably juries of presentment, coroners’ inquests, and juries tasked with responding to writs de odio et atia. It will also require situating trial by jury within the broader context of felony adjudication with its manifold escape valves, including benefit of clergy, sanctuary, abjuration and pardons. The paper will rely on a re-examination of primary source materials and engagement with the existing secondary literature to grapple with the broad questions of what constituted serious criminal wrongdoing, what jurors were expected to know and do in adjudicating felony cases, and the extent to which jurors’ verdicts were based on knowledge or belief in the guilt of an individual, as opposed to such factors as reputation, rumor or expected recidivism. With regard to the issue of jury independence, the paper will query whether juries engaged in unilateral nullification of the law, or whether verdicts that appear to be contrary to the law reflect instead a consensus of judge and jury. Related to this is the macro-level question of what constituted the law, including the related matters of how jurors were to know the law and respond to it. As a think piece, this paper will test several hypotheses regarding problems fundamental to the history of English criminal law, some of which may prove unresolvable.

During the period at issue in this paper–the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when trial juries were first employed in English felony cases–felonious homicide was a catch-all category, with no formal distinction drawn between murder and manslaughter. Nevertheless, juries did distinguish among different types of homicide as they sorted the guilty from the innocent, and the irremediably guilty from those worthy of pardon. Anger was one of the factors that informed this sorting process. This paper builds upon an earlier analysis of the meaning of felony, which posited that the medieval paradigm of felony was an act that involved deliberation and forethought, an exercise of a person's reasoning capacity and volition in the absence of necessity, and moral blameworthiness. Anger complicates this scenario. On the one hand, anger was seen to be a product of an ill-formed conscience. This potentially placed anger within the felonious area of moral blameworthiness. On the other hand, anger in its more extreme manifestations was seen to inhibit a person's ability to reason and to inspire behavior resembling insanity, thereby possibly pointing toward a partial excuse. This paper takes a fresh methodological approach for the study of emotion in the common law, placing legal texts within a broader cultural context in order to illuminate the concerns and priorities of jurors.

This paper explores the meaning of the word “felony” in thirteenth and fourteenth century England, i.e., during the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury. To compile a working definition of felony, the paper presents examples of the language of felony drawn from literary and religious sources, in addition to considering the word’s more formulaic appearance in legal records. The paper then analyzes cases ending in acquittal or pardon, highlighting the factors that might take a criminal case out of the realm of felony. It suggests that the very definition of felony and felonious behavior—and thus the essence of criminal responsibility—may be bound up with the idea of mens rea during this period. The paper aims to uncover broader societal understandings of the nature of guilt and innocence, and to highlight connections and disconnections between the formal criminal law of felony, with its heavy emphasis on capital punishment, and popular and ecclesiastical understandings of culpability.

This dissertation explores the role of mens rea, or guilty mind, as a factor in jury assessments of guilt and innocence during the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury, from the early thirteenth through the fourteenth century. Drawing upon evidence from the plea rolls, but also relying heavily upon non-legal textual sources, including popular literature and guides for confessors, I argue that mind was central to how jurors determined whether a particular defendant should be convicted, pardoned, or acquitted outright. I analyze the meaning of the word “felony,” demonstrating that its meaning was considerably more complex in the medieval context than it is now, when it tends to serve as a placeholder for a category of serious crime. An examination of the word’s use in medieval England’s three primary languages—Latin, Middle English, and Anglo-Norman French—reveals that “felony” was often used interchangeably with such concepts as malice, iniquity, treason, and evil. Furthermore, jury acquittals and pardon recommendations reveal a default understanding of felony that involved, in its paradigmatic form, three essential elements: an act that was reasoned, willed in a way not constrained by necessity, and evil or wicked in its essence. Further chapters explore the complicating role of anger, which could exacerbate or reduce the level of guilt attached to an alleged felony; the contours and mechanisms of guilt assessment, including the gradation of particular sins and crimes and the use of confession to access guilty mind; and the peculiar dangers and difficulties involved in the task of judging, a task shared by judges and jurors within the medieval English system of felony adjudication. The dissertation engages with a long-standing discussion on the history of the medieval English criminal trial jury while also initiating a new discourse on this early chapter in the long Anglo-American history of ideas about criminal responsibility. It introduces a new methodological approach for the study of the early criminal trial jury, placing legal texts within a broader cultural context in order to illuminate the concerns of jurors otherwise largely silenced by the formality and brevity of the legal record.

Felonies are serious crimes, such as murder, rape, or arson, for which the typical consequence is capital punishment or imprisonment for over a year. Etymologically, the word felony originally connoted wickedness or evil. The category of felony derives from the English Common Law, in which a felony conviction traditionally resulted in forfeiture of land and movables, as well as the death penalty. The possible consequences of a felony conviction continue to be monumental today, including disenfranchisement, termination of parental rights, and ineligibility for jury service. Some jurisdictions have done away with the felony/misdemeanor distinction, opting instead for more neutral categories such as indictable and summary offenses.

Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775), Boston lawyer and patriot penman, had he lived longer could have been a leader of the new American Republic with a name familiar in most households.