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Under the Frankish Empire, the court system was
famous for its time. For one one thing, a consistent court system
existed. When Charlemagne came to power as king of the Frankish
Empire, he agreed that the court system was consistent, but he
believed it was consistently unfair. In the Frankish court system, trial was by
ordeal.
If you were a peasant and you were accused of a
crime, to prove your innocence, you had to hold a red hot metal poker
until your hand was deeply burned. If your burnt hand healed in three
days, which it was unlikely to do, you were found innocent. If it did
not, you were guilty.
If you were a noble, you could prove your
innocence in ordeal by fight. And, you could hire someone to fight for
you. If the person you hired lived, you were found innocent. If the
person you hired died, you were found guilty, but you had paid your
punishment - you had paid with "your" life, so to speak, or
at least the life of the person you had hired - thus, you were free to
go.
Charlemagne did not think much of this system of
justice. He started a new system - trial by panel.
Under Charlemagne's system, each accused person would be heard
by a panel of honorable men, men who had taken an oath to listen and
to judge fairly based on the evidence presented. There was still
corruption, but this system had a much better chance of being fair
than did the old one.
Our modern jury system, trial by jury, slowly
developed from this early start.
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