Faculty Bibliography

This paper focuses on the narrow issue of proof of death to open up a broader discussion of several interrelated themes regarding early common-law development: the fashioning of specialized writs and legal processes to deal with doubtful deaths in criminal and civil cases alike, the cross-fertilization of ideas about proof in canon law and the common law, litigants’ strategies in responding to and taking advantage of problems of proof, and the common law’s reliance on a combination of strict proceduralism and equitable flexibility to reduce the likelihood of false felony convictions or illegitimate outcomes in cases involving the right to possession of land. From the few records I have found thus far in the plea rolls, I tentatively conclude that felony homicide cases were not likely to proceed to trial and conviction where doubt existed as to whether a homicide had actually occurred. Beyond the criminal context, however, doubt about a death underlying a claim to landed property did not preclude adjudication on the merits. Drawing such insights from frequently terse legal records, this paper also highlights the problems of proof faced by medieval historians in making sense of our source materials.

This book explores the role of mens rea, broadly defined, as a factor in jury assessments of guilt and innocence from the early thirteenth through the fourteenth century – the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury. Drawing upon evidence from the plea rolls, but also relying heavily upon non-legal textual sources such as popular literature and guides for confessors, Elizabeth Papp Kamali argues that issues of mind were central to jurors' determinations of whether a particular defendant should be convicted, pardoned, or acquitted outright. Demonstrating that the word “felony” itself connoted a guilty state of mind, she explores the interplay between social conceptions of guilt and innocence and jury behavior. Furthermore, she reveals a medieval 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. Examines what factors juries weighed in sorting the guilty from the innocent in the first two centuries of the criminal trial jury. Situates the medieval English law of felony in a broader cultural, social, and religious setting. Speaks to current controversies in the field of criminal law, such as the role of intentionality in determining the bounds of criminal responsibility.