Blood money, also called bloodwit, is money or some sort of compensation paid by an offender (usually a murderer) or their family group to the family or kin group of the victim. [1]
Blood money is, colloquially, the reward for bringing a criminal to justice. A common meaning in other contexts is the money-penalty paid by a murderer to the kinsfolk of the victim. These fines completely protect the offender (or the kinsfolk thereof) from the vengeance of the injured family. The system was common among Germanic peoples as part of the Ancient Germanic law before the introduction of Christianity (weregild), and a scale of payments, graduated according to the heinousness of the crime, was fixed by laws, which further settled who could exact the blood-money, and who were entitled to share it. Homicide was not the only crime thus expiable: blood-money could be exacted for most crimes of violence. Some acts, such as killing someone in a church or while asleep, or within the precincts of the royal palace, and corporal infamy [2] (rape) were "bot-less"; the death penalty was inflicted instead. Such a criminal was outlawed, and could be killed on sight or thrown into a bog in case of rape according to Tacitus. [3]
In Islamic terms, Qisas can in some cases result in blood money being paid out to the family of victims. The amount varies from country to country and from case to case.[ citation needed ]
As a person's life is considered as being the property of God, Judaism forbids the taking of blood-money for the life of a murdered victim. [4]
In Japanese culture it is common to give blood money, or mimaikin, to a victim's family. Such was the case with Lucie Blackman's father, who accepted £450,000 as blood money for the murder of his daughter. [5]
Under the Korean legal system, it is common for those accused of both minor (such as defamation) and serious crimes to offer blood money (habuigeum, 합의금(合意金)) to the victim, and if accepted then the perpetrator is usually excused from further punishment. Despite being common practice, its use in high-profile cases does sometimes result in protests. [6]
In the Christian Bible, the term is used to refer to the thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot received in exchange for revealing the identity of Jesus Christ to the forces sent by the Pharisees and/or the Sanhedrin. After the crucifixion of Christ, Judas returned the payment to the chief priests, who "took the silver pieces and said, 'It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.'" [7]
"Shanghaiing" was the practice of the forced conscription of sailors. Boarding masters, whose job it was to find crews for ships, were paid "by the body," and thus had a strong incentive to place as many seamen on ships as possible. [8] [9] This pay was called blood money. [10]
Hubris, or less frequently hybris, describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with arrogance. The term arrogance comes from the Latin adrogare, meaning "to feel that one has a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people". To arrogate means "to claim or seize without justification... To make undue claims to having", or "to claim or seize without right... to ascribe or attribute without reason". The term pretension is also associated with the term hubris, but is not synonymous with it.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of malice, such as in the case of voluntary manslaughter brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness.
Weregild, also known as man price, was a precept in some historical legal codes whereby a monetary value was established for a person's life, to be paid as a fine or as compensatory damages to the person's family if that person was killed or injured by another.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people frequently experience violence directed toward their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. This violence may be enacted by the state, as in laws prescribing punishment for homosexual acts, or by individuals. It may be psychological or physical and motivated by biphobia, gayphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, and transphobia. Influencing factors may be cultural, religious, or political mores and biases.
Anglo-Saxon law is a body of written rules and customs that were in place during the Anglo-Saxon period in England, before the Norman conquest. This body of law, along with early Medieval Scandinavian law and Germanic law, descended from a family of ancient Germanic custom and legal thought. However, Anglo-Saxon law codes are distinct from other early Germanic legal statements—known as the leges barbarorum, in part because they were written in Old English instead of in Latin. The laws of the Anglo-Saxons were the second in medieval Western Europe after those of the Irish to be expressed in a language other than Latin.
In Islamic Law, tazir refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state. It is one of three major types of punishments or sanctions under Sharia Islamic law — hadd, qisas and ta'zir. The punishments for the Hadd offenses are fixed by the Qur'an or Hadith, qisas allow equal retaliation in cases of intentional bodily harm, while ta'zir refers to punishments applied to the other offenses for which no punishment is specified in the Qur'an or the Hadith or is not punishable under either qisas or hudud.
In criminology, a disorganized offender is a type of serial killer classified by unorganized and spontaneous acts of violence. The distinction between "organized" and "disorganized" offenders was drawn by the American criminologist John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood. These profiles were also studied and modified in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit located in Quantico, Virginia. By classifying these offenders into different categories, the FBI is able to track down offenders by studying their behavior and habits.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Iran. The list of crimes punishable by death includes murder; rape; child molestation; homosexuality; drug trafficking; armed robbery; kidnapping; terrorism; burglary; incest; fornication; adultery; sodomy; sexual misconduct; prostitution; plotting to overthrow the Islamic government; political dissidence; sabotage; arson; rebellion; apostasy; blasphemy; extortion; counterfeiting; smuggling; recidivist consumption of alcohol; producing or preparing food, drink, cosmetics, or sanitary items that lead to death when consumed or used; producing and publishing pornography; using pornographic materials to solicit sex; capital perjury; recidivist theft; certain military offences ; "waging war against God"; "spreading corruption on Earth"; espionage; and treason. Iran carried out at least 977 executions in 2015, at least 567 executions in 2016, and at least 507 executions in 2017. In 2018 there were at least 249 executions, at least 273 in 2019, at least 246 in 2020, at least 290 in 2021, at least 553 in 2022, at least 834 in 2023, and at least 226 so far in 2024. In 2023, Iran was responsible for 74% of all recorded executions in the world.
The concept of rape, both as an abduction and in the sexual sense, makes its appearance in early religious texts.
Qisas or Qiṣāṣ is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice.
Diya in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage by mistake. It is an alternative punishment to qisas. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.
Joji Obara, born Kim Sung-jong is a Korean-Japanese serial rapist who raped between 150 and 400 women. He was charged with drugging, raping and killing an English woman, Lucie Blackman, in July 2000, the rape and manslaughter of an Australian woman, Carita Ridgway, and the rape of eight other women.
Xeer is the traditional legal system of Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Somali Region, and the North Eastern Province in Kenya. It is one of the three systems from which formal Somali law draws its inspiration, the others being civil law and Islamic law. It is believed to pre-date Islam. However, Islam influenced it, with Xeer incorporating some Islamic faith elements. Under this system, the elders, known as the xeer begti, serve as mediator judges and help settle court cases, taking precedent and custom into account. Xeer is polycentric in that different groups within Somali society have different interpretations of xeer.
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law is established by statute, which is to say that the laws are enacted by a legislature. Criminal law includes the punishment and rehabilitation of people who violate such laws.
An appeal was a procedure in English law to bring about a prosecution by a private party of an individual accused of a heinous crime.
Rape in Saudi Arabia is regulated by Saudi Arabia's interpretation of Sharia law, under which someone convicted of the criminal offense of rape can be sentenced to a variety of punishments, ranging from flogging to execution. In 2019, eight executions took place in Saudi Arabia for rape.
The legal system in the United Arab Emirates is based on civil law, and Sharia law in the personal status matters of Muslims and blood money compensation. Personal status matters of non-Muslims are based on civil law. The UAE constitution established a federal court system and allows all emirates to establish local courts systems. The emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah have local court systems, while other emirates follow the federal court system. Some financial free trade zones in Abu Dhabi and Dubai have their own legal and court systems based on English common law; local businesses in both emirates are allowed to opt-in to the jurisdiction of common law courts for business contracts.
Kin punishment is the practice of punishing the family members of someone who is accused of committing a crime, either in place of or in addition to the perpetrator of the crime. It refers to the principle in which a family shares responsibility for a crime which is committed by one of its members, and it is a form of collective punishment. Kin punishment has been used as a form of extortion, harassment, and persecution by authoritarian and totalitarian states. Kin punishment has been practiced historically in Nazi Germany, China, Japan and South Korea, and presently in North Korea.
Early Germanic culture was the culture of the early Germanic peoples. Largely derived from a synthesis of Proto-Indo-European and indigenous Northern European elements, the Germanic culture started to exist in the Jastorf culture that developed out of the Nordic Bronze Age. It came under significant external influence during the Migration Period, particularly from ancient Rome.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded after the 1979 overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty by the Islamic Revolution, and its legal code is based on Islamic law or sharia, although many aspects of civil law have been retained, and it is integrated into a civil law legal system. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic, the judiciary in Iran "is an independent power". The entire legal system—"from the Supreme Court to regional courts, all the way down to local and revolutionary courts"—is under the purview of the Ministry of Justice, but in addition to a Minister of Justice and head of the Supreme Court, there is also a separate appointed Head of the Judiciary. Parliamentary bills pertaining to the constitution are vetted by the Council of Guardians.