STUBBORN PRISONER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 21 April 1934, Page 7

STUBBORN PRISONER

DUMB SHOW IN COURT

LONDON, 13th April

“The jury found the prisoner ‘mute of malice,’ and the Court entered a plea of not guilty.” Thus ran the report of a ease at the Middlesex Sessions recently. The prisoner, who was absolutely sane, and who was neither deaf nor dumb, simply stood silent with a “dumb-sassy” demanour, so the jury decided his muteness was mere eussednoss, and not caused “by the visitation of God.” . Therefore the Court itself entered a plea of not guilty, and the case went on. That prisoner may consider himself fortunate that he did not live 200 years ago. If he had tried the same game then lie would have been taken to the. “press yard” of the prison and stripped naked. He would have been laid between two planks, sandwich fashion, and upon the upper plank there would have been placed .weight after weight until he was either dead or had found his tongue and pleaded one way or the other. That process was known to the law as the “peine forte et dure” — “the punishment strong and sore.” In those days, if a prisoner refused to plead he could not he tried, and by silence a prisoner might avoid the consequence of a conviction for felony, with the resulting forfeiture of all his property to the Crown. if lie died without pleading,’ his family would not suffer.

Actually the last case of the infliction of the peine forte ut dure was in the year 1741. In 1722 silence was made equivalent to actual conviction, and at last, in 1827, refusal to plead (it being found by a jury that the prisoner was mute of malice and not by the visitation of God) was made tantamount to a p,lea of not guilty.