Off the Wall: Dogs and Pigs on Trial. In Salem Too, of course.
Yes, They Put Animals on Trial. No, They Were Not Joking
Yes, They Put Animals on Trial. No, They Were Not Joking
(The Odd Historian) - “An act can be criminal only when the guilty deed, the actus reus, is done with a guilty mind, mens rea. No animal can ever commit a crime; bringing animals to criminal trial is the mark of primitive ignorance.”
- Carl Cohen
So proclaimed the philosopher Carl Cohen in 1986. Who could argue with this judgement? The idea of presenting a pig in front of a courtroom, expected to testify for the grain it ate mindlessly is quite absurd. And yet, mankind’s predecessors most definitely disagreed.
For roughly four centuries, from around 1200-1600, the courts of Europe frequented the trying of animals for criminal charges with the utmost seriousness—appointing defense counsels, expecting appearance in court and damning consequences for a guilty ruling. What Cohen calls primitive ignorance looked, from the inside, a lot like justice—or divine righteousness. And that lack of continuity, so easily identified between what history presented, and how Cohen proclaimed it, is exactly where things get interesting.
The proceedings of an animal trial were quite similar to that of…