Medieval Trial By Ordeal - Did It Actually Work?
Throw the suspect into a pool: if he floats, he's guilty; if he sinks, he's innocent. Or make the perp hold a red-hot iron, and if God heals the burn in three days, she is blameless. Today such methods of justice are dismissed as ignorant and barbaric, but a U. Chicago professor argues that, by leveraging defendants' own superstitions, trial by ordeal made it "possible to secure criminal justice where it would have otherwise been impossible to do so." Boston Globe 01/31/10

Posted February 2, 2010 09:24 PM