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Trial by ordeal. Trial by ordeal was an ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused (called a "proband" [1]) was determined by subjecting them to a painful, or at least an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. In medieval Europe, like trial by combat, trial by ordeal, such as cruentation, was sometimes ...
Ordeal of the bitter water. In the Hebrew Bible, the ordeal of the bitter water was a Jewish trial by ordeal administered by a priest in the tabernacle to a wife whose husband suspected her of adultery, but the husband had no witnesses to make a formal case. It is described in the Book of Numbers (Numbers 5:11–31).
In Anglo-Saxon law, corsned (OE cor, "trial, investigation", + snǽd, "bit, piece"; Latin panis conjuratus), also known as the accursed or sacred morsel, or the morsel of execration, was a type of trial by ordeal that consisted of a suspected person eating a piece of barley bread and cheese totalling about an ounce in weight and consecrated with a form of exorcism as a trial of his innocence.
Assize of Clarendon. The Assize of Clarendon was an act of Henry II of England in 1166 that began a transformation of English law and led to trial by jury in common law countries worldwide, and that established assize courts. Prior systems for deciding the winning party in a case, especially felonies, included trial by ordeal, trial by battle ...
The Church banned participation of clergy in trial by ordeal in 1215. Without the legitimacy of religion, trial by ordeal collapsed. The juries under the assizes began deciding guilt as well as providing accusations. The same year, trial by jury became a fairly explicit right in one of the most influential clauses of Magna Carta, signed by King ...
Trial by combat. A 1540s depiction of a judicial combat in Augsburg in 1409, between Marshal Wilhelm von Dornsberg and Theodor Haschenacker. Dornsberg's sword broke early in the duel, but he proceeded to kill Haschenacker with his own sword. Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to ...
An 88-year-old former boxer has been found not guilty in a retrial of a 1966 quadruple murder in Japan, ending his ordeal as the longest-serving death row inmate ever. A ruling by Tokyo's Shizuoka ...
Compurgation. Compurgation, also called trial by oath, wager of law, and oath-helping, was a defence used primarily in medieval law. A defendant could establish his innocence or nonliability by taking an oath and by getting a required number of persons, typically twelve, to swear they believed the defendant's oath.