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Cicero was still in his twenties when he got Sextus Roscius off a charge of murdering his father and nearly sixty when he defended King Deiotarus, accused of trying to murder Caesar. In between (with, among others, his speeches for Cluentius and Rabirius), he built a reputation as the greatest orator of his time.Cicero defended his practice partly on moral or compassionate grounds of 'human decency'--sentiments with which we today would agree. His clients generally went free. And in vindicating men--who sometimes did not deserve it--he left us a mass of detail about Roman life, law and history and, in two of the speeches, graphic pictures of the 'gun-law' of small provincial towns.
The book describes how the courts dealt with murder, beginning with the coroner's inquest and ending with the conviction and hanging of the murderer. Between these two points the exquisite, almost balletic, procedure, of the courts and their officers is described, the Crown's case against the prisoner is analyzed, and the prisoner's defense is discussed. Magistrates, policemen, crown solicitors, witnesses, jurors, judges, and hangmen make their appearances. The prisoners, whose silence before and during their trials was their most notable characteristic in the nineteenth-century courts, make their apperances too, but not as prominently as their judicial custodians, until they finally and briefly come into the limelight on the gallows. An implicit theme of the book is the apparent contradiction between the apparent simplicity of the courts' procedures and the complexity of the rules that determined their operation. The book relies on a range of printed primary sources, such as newspapers, parliamentary papers, law reports, and legal textbooks, and on MS sources in the National Archives such as the Convict Reference Files. (Series: Irish Legal History Society)
A fascinating examination of the Viola Liuzzo trials, with a foreword by Ari Berman
A collection of some of the most famous cases in English law - with an explantion of how they changed things - by two leading commentators. Every UK lawyer knows of Woolmington v. Director of Public Prosecutions, the ruling which established the ëgolden thread of English lawí whereby the burden of proof lies with the prosecutor in a criminal trial, even in the case of murder. But who was ëWoolmingtoní and how many people know that he escaped the death penalty at the eleventh hour, or that he was twice tried for murder? ëLords give man back his lifeí as the Western Gazette put it. Likewise, in the civil law, how and why did a Mrs. Donoghue come to be drinking a bottle of ginger beer con...
Bankrupt and desperate for money, a brilliant psychopath planned the perfect crime. Sunny Ang selected his victim with care. Jenny was a young divorced bar girl with little schooling, flattered that an educated, charming man should notice her. He seduced her and promised marriage. He also insured Jenny’s life for a million dollars; the sum would go to his mother if she died an accidental death. Then he plotted murder: first, an unsuccessful car accident, and then the fatal scuba diving trip off the dangerous waters of Sisters’ Islands. Jenny went down and never came up. Only a cut flipper was found. Without a body, the Prosecution had no medical evidence and no witnesses to claim unnatural death. How did the law finally catch up with Sunny Ang?
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 2023 'Wendy Joseph's gripping account of the law at work reads like a cliffhanger.' Sunday Times 'Absolutely superb. 5 stars for sheer readability alone. Her Honour entertains as she educates us about murder, about the law and about how we human beings are shaped as we create the culture we live with.' PHILIPPA PERRY, author of THE BOOK YOU WISH YOUR PARENTS HAD READ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 'Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally, wickedly taken away. Victims are shot or stabbed. Less often they are strangled or suffocated or beaten to death....
Murder in the Tower consists of fifteen chapters, each giving an account of a different 17th-century criminal trial. Each case is based on information taken from a collected volume of state trials originally published in the early 18th century. The cases are chosen for their national political importance, or for the light they can shed on wider social issues.
In 1856 William Dove, a young tenant farmer, was tried and executed for the poisoning of his wife Harriet. The trial might have been a straightforward case of homicide, but because Dove became involved with Henry Harrison, a Leeds wizard, and demonstrated through his actions and words a strong belief in magic and the powers of the devil, considerable effort was made to establish whether these beliefs were symptomatic of insanity. It seems that Dove murdered his wife to hasten a prediction made by Harrison that he would remarry a more attractive and wealthy woman. Dove employed Harrison to perform various acts of magic, and also made his own written pact with the devil to improve his personal...
'Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally, wickedly taken away. Victims are shot or stabbed. Less often they are strangled or suffocated or beaten to death. Rarely they are poisoned, pushed off high buildings, drowned or set alight. Then there are the many who are killed by dangerous drivers, or corporate gross negligence. There are a lot of ways you can kill someone. I know because I've seen most of them at close quarters.' As one of just a few judges licensed to try murder cases at the Old Bailey, the author has presided over many of the high-profile cases that all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines - for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of...