The Wisdom of Thomas Jefferson by Kees de Mooy

Author:Kees de Mooy [Series, The Wisdom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2010-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Law and the Judiciary

November 1, 1778

In 1778, Jefferson worked on a massive overhaul of Virginia's legal statutes. His Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments did not pass the Virginia House.

Cruel and sanguinary laws defeat their own purpose, by engaging the benevolence of mankind to withhold prosecutions, to smother testimony, or to listen to it with bias, when, if the punishment were only proportioned to the injury, men would feel it their inclination, as well as their duty, to see the laws observed.

(MCM I, 121)

November 1, 1778

On the Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments.

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them. The law of nature impels everyone to escape from confinement; it should not, therefore, be subjected to punishment. Let the legislator restrain his criminal by walls, not by parchment.

(MCM I, 131)

January 24, 1786

Jefferson described the abolishment of capital punishment in most cases for an article on the United States in the Encyclopédic Methodique, a French encyclopedia.

This privilege, originally allowed to the clergy, is now extended to every man, and even to women. It is a right of exemption from capital punishment, for the first offence, in most cases. It is, then, a pardon by the law. In other cases, the executive gives the pardon. But when laws are made as mild as they should be, both those pardons are absurd. The principle of Beccaria is sound. Let the legislators be merciful, but the executors of the law inexorable.

(MCM I, 414-15)

January 24, 1786

Manslaughter explained for the Encyclopédic Methodique.

Manslaughter is the killing [of] a man with design, but in a sudden gust of passion, and where the killer has not had time to cool. The first offense is not punished capitally, but the second is. This is the law of England and of all the American States; and is not a new proposition. Those laws have supposed that a man, whose passions have so much dominion over him, as to lead him to repeated acts of murder, is unsafe to society: that it is better he should be put to death by the law, than others, more innocent than himself, on the movements of his impetuous passions.

(MCM I, 415)

January 24, 1786

The rationale behind punishments for the Encyclopédic Methodique.

In forming a scale of crimes and punishments, two considerations have principal weight. 1. The atrocity of the crime. 2. The peculiar circumstances of a country, which furnish greater temptations to commit it, or greater facilities for escaping detection. The punishment must be heavier, to counterbalance this. Were the first, the only consideration, all nations would form the same scale. But as the circumstances of a country have influence on the punishment, and no two countries exist precisely under the same circumstances, no two countries will form the same scale of crimes and punishments. For example; in America, the inhabitants let their horses go at large, in the unenclosed lands, which are so extensive, as to maintain them altogether.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.