Innocent III — The Unexpectant Father of our Criminal Jury

ABOUT MY BOOK

• We all know that Magna Carta, 1215 A.D., guaranteed the barons and all freemen the option of“trial by their peers.” Is that where English jury trials came from?

• The answer is, not exactly. 

• Rather, the use of jury trials in criminal cases in England, appears to have been an unintended consequence of Pope Innocent III, and his 4th Lateran Council. Innocent’s intent was clearly to improve the church, and church law. There is not an iota of evidence, however, to even suggest that he intended that jury trial should be used to decide criminal cases in England. 

• But that is exactly what happened. The revision of canon law at the 4th Council of the Lateran forced the authorities in England to opt for a new method of trying criminal cases in the realm. 

• This book explores that question. We have clear written evidence of when jury trial came into use to determine guilt or innocence. And we know the English justices in eyre (judges who held court at fixed locations along a fixed circuit) decided that jury trials would be used to determine the question of “guilt” or “non-guilt.” But we can only guess who put the idea of using jury trials in the minds of the judges. But we can make an educated guess, and that’s what I have done in this book. 

• So, why do I say Innocent III “sired” the English criminal jury trial? Because Pope Innocent clearly wanted to remove members of the clergy from participation in trials by ordeal. Canon 18 of his 4th Council of the Lateran unquestionably accomplished his intended goal.

• The Council’s prohibition against clerics participating in ordeals, however, also deprived the ordeals — and the laity — of any assurance that God would participate in the ordeals to insure the just and correct result. And while Canon 18 was only binding upon the clergy, and not upon the secular authorities, the loss of this assurance deprived the ordeals of any guaranty that the ordeals would produce a just and correct result. The practical effect was to so undermine the reliability of the ordeals, as to affect their abolition. The secular authorities could not continue to use the ordeal of boiling water, although it was not specifically prohibited by Canon 18, where the result would be nothing more than chance or happenstance. 

• Thus, Pope Innocent III, like any caring father, took an action to achieve a specific good. And in the process of removing the clergy from participation in the ordeals, he also achieved, intentionally or unintentionally, a secondary good: he freed the government of England and the laity from the superstition and terror of the ordeal. But like the best of fathers, it does not seem that he anticipated a third good: that trial by ordeal would be replaced by trial by jury in England. 

• It is therefore, fair to say that Pope Innocent III was the unexpectant father of the English Criminal jury trial.