The Punishment of Pirates by Matthew Norton;

Author:Matthew Norton; [Norton, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000 HISTORY / General, HIS057000 HISTORY / Maritime History & Piracy, HIS015040 HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Stuart Era (1603-1714)
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2022-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

full power and authority, according to the course of the admiralty, to issue warrants for bringing any persons accused of piracy or robbery, before them to be tried, heard, and judged; and to summon witnesses, and to take informations and examinations of witnesses upon their oath; and to do all things necessary for the hearing and final determination of any case of piracy . . . and to give sentence and judgment of death . . . according to the civil law, and the methods and rules of the admiralty.

The act goes on to elaborate the procedures for the exercise of these new powers in greater detail than was provided under the 1536 piracy act.

At the outset of a trial, the new law required that the king’s commission be read aloud2 and that all members of the commission were to swear an oath, the precise text of which is included in the act, to honestly and impartially execute the king’s commission. They would then issue a warrant to have the accused “formally brought before them” so that the Register of the Court (one of three court offices specified by the law) could read the indictment. The indictment, specifying “the particular fact or facts of piracy . . . with the time and place when and where, and in what manner it was committed,” was of particular importance, because it at least nominally ensured that the prosecution would need to provide evidence for specific criminal actions, potentially limiting the use of circumstantial evidence or the introduction of evidence for additional crimes during the trial. The accused were then required by the act to plead guilty or not guilty, with a refusal to plead amounting to a confession.3 If the accused entered a not guilty plea, then the Register of the Court would produce the witnesses, who would be sworn and questioned in open court by the prosecution, with only oral testimony permissible.4 The restriction of the written testimony that was standard in noncriminal admiralty proceedings was necessary to ensure that the accused had the opportunity, provided by the act, to cross-examine witnesses. During the cross-examination the witness remained under oath, a critical concession. In this period of early modern English law, cross-examination was becoming increasingly important as a means for challenging the reliability of testimony, but oaths were the more ancient way of ensuring that witnesses were properly motivated to tell the truth (Hill 1968; Langbein 1983). Only the testimony of a sworn witness counted as evidence, and so the defendant’s right to cross-examine a sworn witness was important.5 The cross-examination was not direct, however, and instead the accused would pose their questions to the President of the Court (a second of the three specified court officers), who would ask it of the witness. After the witnesses had been examined, the accused had the opportunity to offer a closing statement, though as they were not under oath they were not technically able to provide evidence on their own behalf, only arguments.

The

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.