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Peine forte et dure (Law French for "hard and forceful punishment") was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead ("stood mute") would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon their chest until a plea was entered, or death resulted.
Peine forte et dure (Law French for "forceful and hard punishment") was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead ("stood mute") would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the condemned to breathe ...
Are we sure this is peine forte et dure? In modern French, fort takes an e after a feminine noun such as peine (just as dur does), but in Old French (which this is derived from) fort was invariable for gender, as in modern Spanish and Italian. So, shouldn't this be peine fort et dure? I have seen in spelt thus. Chamaeleon 23:43, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Often, some form of a plug, or more simply, a piece of fruit, was placed in the victim's mouth and nose beforehand, so they couldn't get a good breath before being dunked. If the victim confessed they would most likely be killed. This method was widely used during the Spanish Inquisition and in England and France.
Prisoners who refused to plead either guilty or not guilty would be "pressed" to death, otherwise known as peine forte et dure, by being slowly crushed by large stones, a practice abolished in 1772. [34] An engraving of the writer Daniel Defoe being pilloried for seditious libel in 1703. He was so popular that instead of stoning him, the crowd ...
The murder, they discover, is a 16th-century torture, the peine forte et dure, and after a second body is found – an elderly woman burnt at the stake – they realise that someone has started a witch hunt and is now killing suspected witches in Whitechapel.
The Constitution of Australia contains no specific provision permitting the Commonwealth Parliament to pass bills of attainder. The High Court of Australia has ruled that bills of attainder are unconstitutional, because it is a violation of the separation of powers doctrine for any body to wield judicial power other than a Chapter III court—that is, a body exercising power derived from ...
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