The right to a fair trial is something that most people take for granted. However, it took a long time for this right to be established, and if you were to take a look at the history of how innocence or guilt was established in the past, it would give you a renewed appreciation for our current justice systems and the laws that are put in place to protect those who are accused of crimes.

You might think our justice system is imperfect, that guilty people often get away with things and innocent people are sometimes convicted of crimes that they didn’t commit, and you’d be right. It is imperfect in a lot of ways, but it is far better than justice systems of the past that used a ‘Trial by Ordeal’ method of determining if a person was innocent or guilty.

Trial by ordeal was practiced in many civilizations, and mention of it goes back as far as the Code of Hammurabi, but it was most widely incorporated into the judicial systems of the Europeans in medieval times. There were different ‘ordeals’ that could be utilized, but the idea was that the accused would have to go through something difficult or painful, and if they were able to complete it without dying they were deemed to be innocent. The thinking was that God would protect the innocent by intervening and performing some sort of miracle on their behalf.

Other ‘verdicts’ were decided by whether the chihuahua training wounds of the accused would start to heal within three days or if they started to fester, a sure sign of guilt. Other times, a person was only proven innocent if they did die by the ordeal. This was seen most often when the accusation was for witchcraft or sorcery. If the person was innocent, they would die an innocent man or woman and go on to a suitable reward, usually either heaven or hell, and thus it was considered entirely fair. If they did not die, they were obviously using supernatural means, and thus their guilt was assured.

As mentioned previously, there were different ordeals that a person would be assigned to if they were accused of a crime. The most popular ordeals were as follows:

Ordeal by fire

This required the accused person to walk over a length of hot ploughshares or walk the same distance while holding a red hot iron.

Ordeal of water

There were two different ordeals; one was the ordeal of hot water, where the accused was meant to retrieve a stone from a pot of boiling water. The other was the ordeal of cold water, where they accused was submerged in a stream or barrel of water, and if they did not die, they were deemed innocent. This was reversed later on, so that if the person did survive (after being weighted down with a millstone in some cases) the person was most certainly a witch or sorcerer.

Ordeal of ingestion

This required the accused to eat dry bread and cheese that was blessed by a priest and if they choked, then they were guilty. There was also the ordeal of the Eucharist, where the person was to receive the tria laser hair removal Eucharist after solemnly swearing his innocence. If the accused was guilty, and the oath he or she had taken was false, the person would die that same year. Other ordeals by ingestion included ingesting the poisonous calabar bean. If the person vomited the bean back up, they were innocent. However, if the person got sick and died, then the person was guilty.

These different methods of judging guilt or innocence should give you an appreciation for how far most cultures have come when it comes to meting out justice.