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词条 Animal trial
释义

  1. Historical animal trials

      Commonly tried animals    Basel case   Werewolves    Monkeys  

  2. In popular culture

  3. See also

  4. Notes

  5. References

  6. External links

{{about|legal proceedings involving animals|the use of animals in drug trials and other experiments|animal testing}}

In legal history, an animal trial was the criminal trial of a non-human animal. Such trials are recorded as having taken place in Europe from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth. In modern times, it is considered in most criminal justice systems that non-human creatures lack moral agency and so cannot be held culpable for an act.

Historical animal trials

Animals, including insects, faced the possibility of criminal charges for several centuries across many parts of Europe. The earliest extant record of an animal trial is the execution of a pig in 1266 at Fontenay-aux-Roses.[1] Such trials remained part of several legal systems until the 18th century. Animal defendants appeared before both church and secular courts, and the offences alleged against them ranged from murder to criminal damage. Human witnesses were often heard and in Ecclesiastical courts they were routinely provided with lawyers (this was not the case in secular courts, but for most of the period concerned, neither were human defendants). If convicted, it was usual for an animal to be executed, or exiled. However, in 1750, a female donkey was acquitted of charges of bestiality due to witnesses to the animal's virtue and good behaviour while her co-accused human was sentenced to death.[2]

Translations of several of the most detailed records can be found in E.P. Evans' The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, published in 1906. Sadakat Kadri's The Trial: Four Thousand Years of Courtroom Drama (Random House, 2006) contains another detailed examination of the subject. Kadri shows that the trials were part of a broader phenomenon that saw corpses and inanimate objects also face prosecution; and argues that an echo of such rituals survives in modern attitudes towards the punishment of children and the mentally ill.

Commonly tried animals

Animals put on trial were almost invariably either domesticated ones (most often pigs, but also bulls, horses, and cows) or pests such as rats and weevils.[3] Creatures that were suspected of being familiar spirits or complicit in acts of bestiality were also subjected to judicial punishment, such as burning at the stake, though few, if any, ever faced trial. {{citation needed|date=August 2017}}

Basel case

According to Johannis Gross in Kurze Basler Chronik (1624), in 1474 a rooster was put on trial in the city of Basel for "the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg", which the townspeople were concerned was spawned by Satan and contained a cockatrice.[4]

Werewolves

Alleged werewolves were put on trial on several occasions, particularly in sixteenth-century France, though the allegation in such cases was always levelled against human defendants.{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}}

Monkeys

In September 2015, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued David Slater on behalf of a monkey named Naruto. The judge dismissed the case, ruling that the monkey did not have legal standing. PETA later appealed the ruling, the appeal was rejected on April 23, 2018.[5]

According to local folklore, a monkey was hanged in Hartlepool, England.[6] During the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship was wrecked in a storm off the coast of Hartlepool. The only survivor from the ship was a monkey, allegedly dressed in a French army uniform to provide amusement for the crew. On finding the monkey on the beach, some locals decided to hold an impromptu trial; since the monkey was unable to answer their questions and because they had seen neither a monkey nor a Frenchman before, they concluded that the monkey must be a French spy.[7] Being found guilty, the animal was sentenced to death and was hanged on the beach. The colloquial name for the resident people of Hartlepool is Monkey hanger.

In popular culture

  • The film The Hour of the Pig, released as The Advocate in the United States, centers on the prosecution of a homicidal pig. Several episodes reflect historical events, and its scriptwriters evidently consulted actual trial transcripts, though the plot revolves around a historical conceit - Colin Firth plays the pig's defence lawyer, but there is no recorded instance of a lawyer representing an animal charged with murder. (There are several cases, by contrast, where lawyers appeared for creatures in ecclesiastical courts - and several rats and beetles, for example, won famous court victories as a result.)
  • Julian Barnes describes a trial against a woodworm in his book A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.
  • In Lewis Carroll's humorous poem The Hunting of the Snark the Barrister dreams about the trial of a pig accused of deserting its sty. In the musical adaptation this features as the song The Pig Must Die.
  • The visual novel adventure video game Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies offers an additional court case as downloadable content, where the protagonist defends an orca accused of murder.
  • In an episode of Tom and Jerry Tom is beheaded for failing to keep the mice away from the food.
  • In the book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (as well as its film adaptation) the hippogriff Buckbeak is sentenced to be decapitated for causing Draco Malfoy a minor injury. During the story's climax, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger manage to free Buckbeak.
  • In Olga Tokarczuk's novel Drive your plow over the bones of the dead the main protagonist writes to police using historical examples of animal trials to justify her theory that animals are responsible for recent local murders.

See also

{{Portal|Discrimination|Animal rights}}
  • Cadaver Synod
  • Zoophilia and the law
  • Topsy (elephant)

Notes

1. ^{{Harvnb|Cohen|1986|p=7}}
2. ^Srivastava, Anila. (March 1, 2007) [https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-162353987/mean-dangerous-and-uncontrollable-beasts-mediaeval "Mean, dangerous, and uncontrollable beasts": Mediaeval Animal Trials]. Volume 40, issue 1, page 127. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature.
3. ^{{Harvnb|Evans|1987}}{{Page needed|date=May 2011}}
4. ^{{cite journal|last1=E.V.|first1=Walter|title=Nature on Trial: The Case of the Rooster That Laid an Egg|journal=Comparative Civilizations Review|date=1985|volume=10|issue=10|url=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol10/iss10/7/|accessdate=2 April 2018|language=en|issn=0733-4540}}
5. ^{{cite news|last1=Randazzo|first1=Sara|title=Copyright Protection for Monkey Selfie Rejected by U.S. Appeals Court|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/copyright-protection-for-monkey-selfie-rejected-by-u-s-appeals-court-1524526086|accessdate=24 April 2018|agency=The Wall Street Journal|publisher=The Wall Street Journal|date=April 23, 2018}}
6. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.thisishartlepool.co.uk/history/thehartlepoolmonkey.asp |title=The Hartlepool Monkey, Who hung the monkey? |publisher=This is Hartlepool |date= |accessdate=2010-09-29}}
7. ^Maconie, Stuart (2008), [https://books.google.com/books?id=AFL7O5nj0bUC&pg=PA301&dq=hartlepool+monkey+trial&hl=en&sa=X&ei=C8IpU5PFIMbt0gWxk4DgBA&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=hartlepool%20monkey%20trial&f=false Pies and Prejudice: In search of the North], Ebury Press, {{ISBN|978-0091910235}} (p. 300-301)

References

  • {{Citation

| last=Cohen
| first=Esther
| title=Law, Folklore and Animal Lore
| journal=Past and Present
| publisher=Oxford University Press
| year=1986
| volume=110
| pages=6
| doi=10.1093/past/110.1.6

}}.

  • {{Citation

| last=Evans
| first=E. P.
| title=The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
| publisher=Faber and Faber
| origyear=1906| year=1987
| isbn = 978-0-571-14893-6

}}.

External links

  • [https://archive.org/details/criminalprosecut00evaniala The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals] (1906) at the Internet Archive
  • {{cite web|url= http://www.animalsandsociety.org/assets/library/276_s216.pdf |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110727122106/http://www.animalsandsociety.org/assets/library/276_s216.pdf |dead-url= yes |archive-date= 2011-07-27 |title="The Law is an Ass: Reading E. P. Evans' The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals" }} {{small|(1.18 MB)}}, Society and Animals, Volume 2, Number 1 (1994)
  • {{cite web|url= http://www.animallaw.info/journals/jo_pdf/lralvol9_p97.pdf |title="The Historical and Contemporary Prosecution and Punishment of Animals" }} {{small|(178 KB)}} (2003)
  • Nicholas Humphrey, {{cite web|url=http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2002Bugs&Beasts.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070629062204/http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2002Bugs%26Beasts.pdf |dead-url=yes |archive-date=2007-06-29 |title="Bugs and Beasts Before the Law" }} {{small|(120 KB)}}, Chapter 18 of The Mind Made Flesh, pp. 235–254, Oxford University Press (2002)
  • Animals on Trial (MP3), BBC World Service documentary podcast, broadcast on 15 March 2011
  • Bugs and Beast Before the Law in The Public Domain Review
{{DEFAULTSORT:Animal Trial}}

2 : History of criminal justice|Types of trials

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