Judicial Mercies
In colonial America, laws provided for extremely punishments for most crimes. Many crimes, including theft in some cases, were considered capital -- dictating executions for offenders. Needless to say, colonial Americans did not kill one another; on the contrary -- despite certain amounts of crime prevailing, capital punishment was rarely, if ever, exercised by courts. One way this occured was through the invokation of judicial mercies by a judge or jury based on the scenario at hand.
One judicial leniance, known as the Jury of Matrons, was occasionally used in colonial period judicial cases in which pregnant women were involved. Juries of Matrons were trial juries comprised entirely of older women with credentials as mothers and wives. This special jury was tasked with asserting or refuting the defendant's state of pregnancy.
In colonial justice, leniancy would be used in cases involving pregnant women to prevent the execution of an unborn child in the matter of capital offenses. In such cases, the woman's execution would be postponed until after the completion of her pregnancy, though many times sentences were simply mitigated -- sometimes even without the production of a child.
Communities tended to avoid carrying out capital sentences involving new mothers to prevent incurring the burden of raising a child orphaned by the courts. Due to the typical leniance of colonial courts in cases involving invocations of Juries of Matrons, the Jury of Matrons came to be seen as a method of mitigating the seriousness or penalty of a crime in situations in which a community would prefer to not pursue a capital resolution.
Another form of mercy permitted by colonial law in the early judicial system was Pious Perjury, which was the act of a jury perjuring itself in the representation of evidence related to a case in order to provide leniancy to the defendant during sentencing. For example, in cases involving high-value theft or property damage, juries in locales where such offenses would be considered capital could provide a guilty verdict for the charge of theft, but with a statement reassessing the item or property damaged or stolen with a relatively small value -- thus mitigating the sentencing guidelines from capital to a lesser resolution.
Both Pious Perjury and Juries of Matrons involved actions by juries that provided judicial mercy to defendants. Mercies like these were most often utilized as means of forgiveness and mitigation in smaller communities where laws on the books tended to demand capital punishment for many offenses as a way of keeping peace and order the community.
Citation
Eckert, Daniel C. Judicial Mercies. (2008, February).