Pre-April archives, back to Click here for a quick link to the News in-depth series. Login form protected by Login LockDown. Remember Me. Forgot your password? Register for a free account. Username or E-mail:. Click here to cancel reply. What's New? Featured Photos Food or flute?
Santa on Saturday. The big fix. In most cases, an attorney is appointed to serve as court magistrate. But in some communities, the mayor acts as the judge. Larger mayor's courts have full-time staff members. What kinds of cases can mayor's courts handle? Misdemeanor offenses and traffic violations, including drunk driving offenses, are often heard in mayor's courts.
What cases can they not handle? Mayor's courts don't have jurisdiction over felonies and cases involving domestic violence, assault, stalking and trespassing and protective orders. Mayor's courts also don't hold jury trials.
Courts can send offenses to the municipal courts they belong to. Again in , another commission at Guildhall would not admit oath-helpers in a charge of conspiracy fn. In the Laws of Aethelred it was provided that a man, who had been charged by the Portreeve or Tunreeve or other reeve with withholding toll, could swear with the seventh hand that he withheld no toll which he was bound to pay fn.
Further mention of the custom in the 12th century shows that the foreigner in London enjoyed the privilege in pleas of debt and trespass fn. It was defined in as applicable to breach of contract and debt, where the party plaintiff had no writing or tally to prove his claim fn. The custom was not peculiar to London: it was a favourite method of proof in the Law Merchant at this period, and numerous instances are to be found in the proceedings of the Piepowder Courts fn.
Before dealing with the ordinary seventh-hand oath, mention should be made of two other oaths used in the City. According to the Liber Albus fn. Several cases in the Mayor's Court illustrate the custom. A plaintiff in an action of debt who had no tally to support his plea, offered to verify his claim by his corporal oath and by consent of the defendant did so successfully fn.
In another case of debt, where the plaintiff had a tally, the defendant alleged a condition in the sale and put himself on the oath of the plaintiff, who accepted the challenge and won his case fn. In all other cases, including one where the plaintiff put himself on the oath of the defendant fn. A single oath was also occasionally allowed where a man's goods had been attached in the hands of another person for a debt owed by the latter fn. Possibly the single oath was a concession to citizens only, since the general rule both in London and elsewhere seems to have been an oath with the third hand, and even a sixth hand was not unknown fn.
The custom was analogous to that of identifying waifs and strays fn. Somewhat similar was the usage in Foreign Attachment. A plaintiff might cause money or goods to be attached in the hands of a third person, on the ground that they belonged or were owed to his debtor.
The third person's remedy, if he had any grievance, was to appear in Court and swear with the third hand that the goods and moneys attached were not the property of the debtor to the value of fourpence fn. The ordinary seventh-hand oath is illustrated in many cases in our Rolls, in such actions as breach of contract, covenant, debt and detinue, where the plaintiff had no writing or tally, or where the writing did not cover the matter in dispute fn.
Citizens were generally given an interval of a fortnight in which to produce their oath-helpers, while foreigners were expected to have them ready and to take the oath incontinenti -a provision probably intended to prevent delays in doing justice to passing merchants fn. Already, as in the peremptory oath, the seventh-hand oath was beginning to be regarded as a proof faute de mieux. Plaintiffs could forbar a defendant's oath by producing witnesses, or a bond or deed fn.
At its best a law was merely a sworn testimonial to a litigant's credibility by one whose own credibility might not be above question. Mediaeval men made the oath as intricate and formal as possible in the hope that the divine powers would cause a perjured oath-helper to make some slip. Thus a defendant might fail in his law, because one of the oath-helpers called him Robert instead of Henry fn.
Another method of proof in use in the Mayor's Court has been called "trial by witnesses. Our rolls are particularly informative in certain details, of which little evidence is to be found in other borough records fn. The custom was of ancient origin in London. In the 12th century fn. We may imagine this rule proved difficult in working, for it is not repeated. At the end of the 13th century either party could call witnesses, in such actions as debt, detinue and covenant, but apparently not both parties.
The plaintiff after hearing the defendant deny the accusation, proffered his witnesses, by saying that the defendant defended unjustly and that he had good and lawful men, John and John, who were present, etc. On the rarer occasions when a defendant produced witnesses, it was usually to support some issue which had arisen in the pleadings fn. Citing of witnesses would debar a defendant from his law. If the Court agreed to accept them, the party must take an oath immediately in Court that he would not call others than those he had named, nor suborn them fn.
The requisite qualifications for witnesses were that they had not suffered judgment for perjury, or been excommunicated, or put in the pillory fn. In the case of foreigners vouching witnesses, the latter must be produced incontinenti -a rule which foreigners sometimes found to be a hindrance rather than a help, as in the case of a foreign defendant who produced one witness and caused the other to be essoined excused for his appearance, and lost his action for so doing fn.
The witnesses were examined by two aldermen, who put questions to them to ascertain whether their testimony agreed on all points fn. In an action where one witness said that a bond was given at Paris, and the other at Nogente, the hearing was adjourned in order that the parties might come to an agreement meanwhile fn. In another case heard on appeal in the Mayor's Court, the proof of the witnesses was annulled owing to a divergence of testimony fn. A slight divergence might be passed over, as when one witness testified that a hawk was entrusted to the defendant, and the other witness called the bird a goshawk fn.
But in actions of debt, they were expected to testify and agree as to the contract out of which the debt arose, and if their testimony showed that a different sum was owed than what was claimed, the action was null fn. The testimony of witnesses must be fully recorded by the aldermen who examined them, otherwise the record and process of the action would be found faulty fn.
In none of these actions was rebutting evidence called, or the testimony submitted to a jury. From the point of view of the unsuccessful litigant, trial by witnesses must have been unsatisfactory at the best of times.
The matter was worse when witnessing became a trade. An ordinance was passed in fn. In future such witnesses must not be received fn. Nevertheless, there were signs that a system more in consonance with modern ideas was in the making. When a rector was charged with avowing four putrid wolves in a cask, and pleaded that he bought them as medicine for lupus, all the physicians and surgeons of the City were summoned and gave evidence that in none of their medical and surgical writings was any disease mentioned for which the flesh of wolves could be used fn.
A man whose goods had been wrongfully attached abroad brought forward six witnesses who, in answer to the Mayor and Aldermen, declared that no one except the plaintiff had any property in those goods fn. A City collector, charged with having uttered disrespectful words about the King, put himself on a jury and called to witness four persons who were present, and who were added to the jury for their information fn.
The commonest method of proof in the City at our period was the Jury, which, though not a native growth, was soon recognised to have great advantages. An early example of its use was the jury of forty-two persons by which a foreigner accused of murder could clear himself. Two Middlesex men at the Iter of , being accused of murder by a man's widow, put themselves on a jury drawn from the three Aldermanries nearest to the place where the body was found, and were acquitted fn.
Skip to main content. Curious about where they are specifically? Decades of research on the court system in the United States has found systematic differences in how courts treat poor people and people of color. People with limited means and people of color plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit more often, are convicted of crimes more frequently, and are sentenced to harsher punishments than middle class and white people.
This is because the decision a mayor or magistrate makes about a case is directly tied to the revenue money collected by the town.
0コメント