Other historical forms of punishment besides serving time or money? I am currently undertaking a personal research project to create a comprehensive list of all forms of punishment that have been meted out by legal systems across history. Common forms of punishment include serving time or paying fines; less common and more violent forms of punishment include losing a limb or life. I am curious to know if there are any other forms of punishment, even if only used in the past. Can anyone share any information or examples of such punishments that they may be aware of? For example, a person being forgiven if they recite some religious ritual or agree to marry someone else.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there When we think of crime and punishment, we automatically think of a powerful central and secular government with (relatively) clear laws handing down judicial sanctions - usually of imprisonment or financial penalties but increasingly including home detention, community service, or restitution to the victim. This is all the product of post-enlightenment thinking and would be largely unrecognisable (and stupid) to our ancestors. We don't think as they did, and we struggle to get into their mindset. This cuts both ways - we are equally horrified by the Roman collective punishment of decimation as we are by the fact that a Germanic murderer merely needed to pay a weregild, the price of which was determined by the social rank of the victim - with a discount for Welshmen in Anglo-Saxon law. Categories of Punishment All punishments fall into one or more broad categories listed here in decreasing order of severity according to the Western tradition. Damnnation Because we are a largely secular society, we don't think of this as being a punishment for crime; but there was no distinction between sin and crime in the past. The beauty of this system is that no crime goes undetected or unpunished. Whether you get your punishment in Purgatory, in front of the Assessors of Maat, in Gehinnom, or Mictlān, everybody gets what they deserve. This was not just a matter between a person and god - religion was culture, culture was religion, and both were the law. For your crimes, the priesthood could make things worse in the afterlife; or for your piety, they could make things better. In the Christian tradition, we have excommunication, which cuts you off from social life (a form of ostracisation) but also put your soul in peril - if you died in this state, you went straight to hell, no passing Purgatory, no collecting $200. This could be a collective punishment, called an interdict, where the clergy would be prohibited from performing those rituals required to make one right with God, such as christenings, marriages, and the last rites. We also have Hell as the punishment for an unrepented mortal sin, most often suicide, but also unrepentant capital felons, where the Church would not perform a burial. In the same vein, post-mortem dismemberment, such as being hung, drawn and quartered, which, in a Christian tradition that looked to the literal resurrection of the body, meant that you could never be resurrected. Apparently, a God that created the Universe couldn't stick people back together. This belief faded in the wake of the Great War when the widespread use of artillery meant there were hundreds of thousands of Christian dead in bits so small that not only couldn't God stick them together again, they couldn't be identified. Execution A time-honoured staple for anything from murder, treason, and drug trafficking to worshipping in the wrong way or, in some parts of the world, being the wrong race in the presence of a police officer. Just about any way you can imagine of deliberately ending a person's life has, at some time and place, been a method of execution. Modern usage has tended towards the elimination of suffering, which gave us lethal injection, firing squad, the electric chair, long-drop hanging, the guillotine, and, in the more advanced parts of the world, the elimination of the death penalty altogether. Historical methods tended to include torture, prolongation, and humiliation as a deliberate part of the execution &quot;such as the breaking wheel, keelhauling, sawing, hanging, drawing, and quartering, burning at the stake, flaying, slow slicing, boiling alive, impalement, mazzatello, blowing from a gun, schwedentrunk, and scaphism. Other methods which appear only in legend include the blood eagle and brazen bull.&quot; And, of course, crucifixion. This can be direct punishment of the perpetrator or, for collective crimes, execution through drawing lots or decimation. Human sacrifice is generally not execution as it was usually not a punishment for a crime but a great honour for the sacrifice - even if the methods came from the same playbook. Mutilation This includes one-for-one maiming, the most famous being Exodus 21:23–27 &quot;If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.&quot; However, this was also a feature of Babylonian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic law. It also includes removing the hands of thieves, the genitals of adulterers, and the tongues of blasphemers. Blinding was also a common punishment, often politically driven, because, throughout many parts of the world, a blind person could not inherit. It also includes branding, scarification, tattooing, or mutilation of the ears or nose, but this is primarily intended as ostracisation to mark the criminal permanently (see ostracisation and humiliation below). Depending on the technique, mutilation may effectively be capital punishment. Also, some forms of corporal punishment, like flagellation and caning, may permanently scar their victim, although that is not their primary purpose. Ostricisation and Humiliation Humans are social creatures, and exclusion from or falling in standing in society is particularly devastating - particularly in a pre-modern society when ostracisation often meant death. Excommunication has already been mentioned. We also have being declared an outlaw - this wasn't, as it largely is now, a synonym for criminal - it was placing someone beyond the protection of the law, effectively making them fair game for anything anyone felt like doing to them. Exile or banishment was another punishment usually reserved for those of high standing, like nobles or royalty. Forcing people to be publicly exposed and subject to verbal and physical abuse, such as through the stocks or pillory, was common. Having convicted people bear a mark of shame or a visible mark of their crime (see mutilation above) was also common. Arguably, maintaining criminal records and sex offender registers is a form of humiliation, particularly if it is made public. Servitude From slavery, to penal servitude, to indentured service, to transportation, to modern prison workshops, if you can make someone pay for their own punishment, people will find a way to do it. However, imprisonment per see has only been considered a punishment since early modern times and came in with such strange notions as reform (hence reformatory school) and penitence (hence penitentiary). Before then, a prison was a place where you kept people while awaiting trial or punishment - or people who were just too damn dangerous to be let loose. Corporal Punishment Caning, whipping, hitting with sticks, hitting with nettles, breaking bones, holding people in painful positions, hitting with the hand, etc. These have all been (and some still are) judicial punishments as well as methods of maintaining discipline in children and military forces. Financial These are basically two types: fines paid to the government, or restitution paid to the victim or victim's family.
"Double jeopardy" applies to a criminal proceeding, that is one that needs to be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," and involves criminal sanctions such as jail time. Once OJ was acquitted of criminal charges, he couldn't be tried again as a "criminal." The second trial was a civil trial, with a "lesser" standard of proof (preponderance of evidence), and lesser "damages" (money, not jail time). So even though the facts were the same, OJ was accused of violating a different standard, that is a different "law" so to speak. He could be tried for a "tort" just not a crime. Or put another way, "wrongful death" is not the same as murder. The latter requires intent. Wrongful death suggests "tortious" negligence, but not necessarily intent.
I'll use Wisconsin as a jurisdiction. If you file a false death certificate, that's a felony. But you probably wouldn't go that far. It could be disorderly conduct. In Wisconsin disorderly conduct is described as follows: Whoever, in a public or private place, engages in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which the conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor. There's also a statute prohibiting "Disrupting a funeral or memorial service" but it won't apply in this case unless disorderly conduct applies. It would raise the penalty to a class A misdemeanor (or a class I felony if you somehow did it again after being convicted once.) On the civil side, there could be an action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, either for the false report of your death, or for a "corpse" suddenly coming to life. This kind of lawsuit requires "extreme and outrageous conduct", but if this isn't, I don't know what would be.
Here are a few examples (sorry, they are in German) https://www.echo24.de/region/kuenzelsau-24-jaehriger-verurteilt-gefaengnis-beleidigungen-instagram-13181018.html https://www.mainpost.de/regional/main-spessart/beleidigung-bringt-34-jaehrigen-ins-gefaengnis-art-8445139 https://www.maz-online.de/Lokales/Brandenburg-Havel/Gericht-verhaengt-Gefaengnis-wegen-Beleidigung-und-Noetigung https://www.wochenblatt.de/archiv/fuer-beleidigungen-wieder-einmal-ab-in-den-knast-154472 So it does actually happen, but it's fairly rare. It typically involves abusive behavior: frequently repeated insults, defamation, and threats and also ignoring any cease and desist orders or requests to stop the behavior. There is also a pre-existing criminal record: it's not the first time they stand in front of a judge for this type of thing. The guy in the last article had already 12 previous offenses so the judges felt that a fine or probation is just not working. So it's not so much the exact type of insult but more about relentlessly barraging the victim and having an existing pattern of bad behavior and related offenses.
Is this realistic? Yes. The dramatic performance plays out in the same way that it would in the U.S. Court system. The actual killing of the wife would be 'legal', so can he be charged for murder for something that has been done legally, only because they can prove is intent to kill her before that? Especially since he has already been acquitted of that fact. Mostly, this is an issue of causation and not double jeopardy. From a double jeopardy perspective, the crime of murder is not complete until the person dies, and they have not be tried for murder, so this is a different crime that had not occurred until after the attempted murder trial was over. Causation Issues Even if the immediate cause of the wife's death is withdrawal of life support, the shooting could still be a legally sufficient cause of the wife's death. For example, suppose that you shoot someone and the hospital can't give the victim a blood transfusion because the victim has blood type O- (universal donor) which can only receive blood from other people with blood type O-, and the hospital, due to negligence on the part of a hospital administrator, has run out out of type O- blood. The fact that the victim would not have died if the hospital has not negligently failed to have type O- blood on hand does not provide a defense to murder on the part of the person who shot her. While terminating life support is "legal" it also constitutes a non-judicial finding with legal effect on the part of the person authorizing it and the physicians signing off on the decision, the further medical care would have been futile and that the person whose life support was terminated was already dead in key material respects, even though they would not be dead for purposes of a murder charge until life support is terminated. When death is a natural and foreseeable result of action that causes physical harm, the death is caused by the act that causes the physical harm. Something else that causes death would have to be a "superseding cause" and not just an additional cause of death. Thus, the fact that life support was terminated legally does not mean that she cannot be a murder victim. Indeed, many murder victims are people who are on life support for some period of time and then have that life support terminated because it is futile to continue medical care and the person is already "brain dead" or something equivalent to that. Collateral Estoppel Issues Double jeopardy does carry with it a related concept of "collateral estoppel" which provides that facts necessarily decided in one criminal case cannot be decided differently in a subsequent, related criminal case in some circumstances. But, collateral estoppel applies only when the facts in the prior criminal case were necessarily decided on the merits in the prior criminal case. Acquittal of criminal charged does not necessarily include a determination that someone was innocent of the charges. The fact that he was acquitted of attempted murder does not mean that the jury found that he didn't attempt or intend to murder her. In particular, a dismissal of criminal charges as a result of a technicality that excluded evidence related to an element of the crime for which there was an acquittal, is not a determination on the merits that a particular element of a crime was actually absent, so it would not be binding in the subsequent criminal case for murder. An acquittal does not mean that every element of the prior criminal charges was found not to be present. Collateral estoppel arising from the double jeopardy right, in contrast, might be a ground for dismissal of the murder case, if the man's primary (and perhaps only) defense to the attempted murder case had been that he had established the affirmative defense that someone else committed the murder, or that he had an alibi that made it impossible for him to have committed the murder. Then, the jury would have found on the merits that this defense, equally applicable to the murder case, had already been established.
There appears to be no specific number of hours. This article touches on the matter, presenting a slew of cases where e.g. the prisoner was on a hunger strike (self-imposed starvation is not cruel and unusual punishment). Gardener v. Beale upheld a 2-meal plan with 18 hours between dinner and brunch to be allowed. This was, however a temporary exception rather than a long term policy which was to provide 3 meals not spaced further apart than 12 hours. There does not seem to be any period deemed to be legally too long, however a prison system may have (probably does) have a policy, which cannot simply be ignored.
A judge can only impose sentences as prescribed by law. Suppose, as a random example, that a person is convicted in federal court of fraudulently mutilating coins, in violation of 18 USC 331. That section of the statute states the punishment for such a violation: ...Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. The scale of fines is to be found at 18 USC 3571; for this crime, which is a felony, the maximum fine would be $250,000 (with certain exceptions, which let us suppose do not apply here). So in principle, the judge may sentence the offender to any of the following: Five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 Five years in prison and no fine Three days in prison and a fine of $6.25 No prison and a fine of $5000 You get the idea. (In practice, the judge is likely to follow official sentencing guidelines, but is not legally required to do so.) But the judge may not sentence the offender to any of the following, because the statute does not authorize it: Death A fine of $250,000.01 Five years and one day in prison Wearing a silly hat for a week Slavery I do not know of any federal criminal statute authorizing slavery as a punishment for any crime, so therefore, a federal judge cannot impose this sentence. Congress could in principle create such a law, and if they did it would not violate the Thirteenth Amendment, but they have not done so. (The Eighth Amendment might be a separate question, as slavery might very well be considered a cruel and unusual punishment by today's courts. And as you point out, such a law might also be in violation of treaty obligations.) (I assume here that &quot;slavery&quot; is understood to be something distinct from &quot;imprisonment&quot;, although I know some would disagree.)
Chapter 26 section 7 of the Swedish Penal Code points to a possible consequence of prison escape: If the sentenced person seriously violates the conditions for the serving of the sentence in a prison, the date for conditional release may be postponed. Such a postponement may amount to at most fifteen days on each occasion of use. Aiding an escape is a specifically-identified crime, but apparently the act of escaping is not, though is would have a negative consequence (we would say that such a treatment is an "infraction", not a separate crime). This article in fn. 7 indicates that it is not a crime in Germany, and The Interwebs tells me the same thing. Mexican law explicitly declares that there is no penalty for prison escape (Article 154, with translation from here) To the prisoner that to escape (from prison) will not be given any penalty, except when it’s in complicity with one or more other prisoners and they perform violence on other people, in which case the penalty is six months to three years in prison. It is a specific crime in the US (governed by individual jurisdictions). The state of Washington in RCW 9A.76.110 makes general prison escape a class B felony. Adjacent provisions increase the severity of the crime if the person is a sexually violent predator (9A.76.115), reduces the crime if it is escape from detention (not pursuant to a conviction), and further reduces the crime if it is just escape from custody (e.g. escapes from the drunk tank).