Murder accused who chose trial by battle
We often sneer at outdated and arcane laws that still stand on American statute books.
Under a 1924 law in Arizona, for instance, it’s illegal to allow your donkey to sleep in a bathtub.
But British courts have come a cropper, too, when someone has hit upon the wheeze of using an obsolete part of the criminal code that has somehow not been repealed.
Just such a case was Ashford v Thornton, heard before the Court of King’s Bench back in 1818, that upheld the right of the defendant on a private appeal from an acquittal for murder, to trial by battle.
The previous year, Abraham Thornton had been charged with the murder of Mary Ashford, whom he had met at a dance.
The following morning, she was found, drowned, in a pit.
There was little evidence of violence, and although public opinion was strongly against Thornton, the jury quickly acquitted him.
However, Ashford’s brother, William, launched an appeal and Thornton was rearrested, whereupon he claimed the right to trial by battle, a medieval option introduced to British courts by the Normans.
The court was caught by surprise and after the judges conferred at length, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Ellenborough, reluctantly announced that by the law of the land, Thornton did have the right to demand Ashford face him in combat.
Ashford, a frail young man, declined to fight the sturdier Thornton, who was freed once more, and after leaving through a side door to avoid an angry mob, fled to America.
Appeals such as Ashford’s were abolished by the Appeal by Murder Act which was passed in great haste by the House of Lords in 1819, two centuries after trial by combat was last mentioned in documents.
It’s thought King Charles twice intervened in the 1630s to delay and probably prevent such combats, but no official records exist of the outcomes and there are no accounts of trial by battle actually taking place.
Which means the last certain judicial battle in Britain took place in Scotland in 1597 when one Adam Bruntfield accused James Carmichael of murder – and killed him in battle.
The last battle in England took place 150 years before that when a servant accused his master of treason.
Foolishly, the master over-fortified himself with wine before the trial and was then slain by his servant.
In 1985, two Scotsmen accused of armed robbery tried to claim trial by battle on the grounds that the abolition didn’t extend to Scotland, while in 2002, a 60-year-old man issued with a £25 fine for a minor motoring offence demanded trial by battle against a champion to be nominated by the DVLA.
He claimed trial by battle was still valid under European human rights legislation, but was fined £200, with £100 costs.