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The principle of inquisition is a form of criminal proceeding developed in Italy, which is labeled by the axiom of the ex officio inquiry of a criminal issue. There is no obligation of the inquiry and the final decision to be executed by the same institution.
The procedure of inquisition was already known in Roman law. In the time of the ancient Roman kings inquisition was the standard method of criminal inquiry. There were no rules. The disposal of the magistrate, who acted on pure denunciation, was the criteria which guided the proceedings. Because of these problems, the principle of inquisition was replaced by a principle of contradiction.
Pope Innocent III (1161–1216) reintroduced the procedure of inquisition for canon law, where it became a well-feared instrument against heretics. The concept of inquisition was not limited to canon law. In Italy the use of the inquisition was transferred to secular criminal law.
The first adaption within the territory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation were the Wormser Reformation of 1498 and the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis of 1507. The adoption of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina ("peinliche Gerichtsordnung" of Charles V) in 1532 makes the procedure of inquisition empirical law. It was the passage of the French Code of criminal procedure of 1808 [ fr ] (code d'instruction criminelle), by Emperor Napoleon of France on November 16, 1808 and the adoption of its principles in German territories that terminated the classical procedure of inquisition in Germany.
Completely new to the criminal procedures of the Middle Ages was the attempt to base the decision of the opening and the sentence on facts, inquired by the court.
The law of the Germans only allowed the beginning of a lawsuit on the accusations of the victim. The offender was limited to the positioning of the charge. The only hearing of evidence was the confirmation of the good reputation of the defendant by oath. Notable members of the community, so called helpers by oath (Eidhelfer) described only the reputation of the defendant, not the facts or the circumstances of the crime. There was no witness to the crime involved. In case of good reputation, the charge failed. Only in the case of bad reputation or of confession was a conviction possible. That is the reason why the typical legal conflict of the early Middle Ages was solved by regulated force of arms, which public peace and peace of God alone limited, while legal proceedings were almost an exception. The institution of inquisition was an enormous legal improvement, because it included the proof relating to the facts of the crime to the inquiry. The reputation of the defendant no longer was the main topic of the proceedings. It was replaced by an inquiry, made on real facts.
The implementation of the facts practically meant an enormous restriction of the rights of a defendant with good reputation, who now faced a real risk of condemnation. There was a certain discomfort with this risk. Therefore there was still the need for a confession in addition to the results of the inquiry. This confession was to be gained by torture. An innocent was deemed able to withstand the torture with the help of God, and thus would not falsely confess. Contemporaries understand the problem of torture not to be this last proof of findings, long proved by finished inquiries, but an easy way to substitute those inquiries. The criminal law of the Duchy of Lorraine limited the use of torture with the need of approval by the procurateur general, an administrator situated at the ducal court in Nancy. The local court had to ask for the use of torture by presenting the results of its inquiries.
The greatest problems of the medieval proceeding of inquiry were to be found outside of the principle itself.
The principle of inquisition is still in use in modern criminal law in Germany, though to a restricted extent. The legal basis is § 244 II Strafprozeßordnung (German code of criminal procedure) that orders the court to examine ex officio every fact and proof that could be relevant to a judgment. [2] Most of these facts or proofs are inserted by the plaintiff or the defendant, but the court has the right to present evidence on its own. The court is even enabled to judge, according to the result of the proceedings, the violation of laws the plaintiff did not mention and to sentence differently from the proposals of the litigants (theoretically an offense of involuntary manslaughter could be raised into a charge and sentence of premeditated murder, for example). If the proceedings show the violation of other laws by the same act, the court is able to pass sentence on these as well.
United States appellate procedure involves the rules and regulations for filing appeals in state courts and federal courts. The nature of an appeal can vary greatly depending on the type of case and the rules of the court in the jurisdiction where the case was prosecuted. There are many types of standard of review for appeals, such as de novo and abuse of discretion. However, most appeals begin when a party files a petition for review to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision.
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.
Nolo contendere is a legal term that comes from the Latin phrase for "I do not wish to contend". It is also referred to as a plea of no contest or no defense.
A plea bargain is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or nolo contendere. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of the several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.
Perjury is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding.
Procedural law, adjective law, in some jurisdictions referred to as remedial law, or rules of court, comprises the rules by which a court hears and determines what happens in civil, lawsuit, criminal or administrative proceedings. The rules are designed to ensure a fair and consistent application of due process or fundamental justice to all cases that come before a court.
In a legal dispute, one party has the burden of proof to show that they are correct, while the other party has no such burden and is presumed to be correct. The burden of proof requires a party to produce evidence to establish the truth of facts needed to satisfy all the required legal elements of the dispute.
An inquisitorial system is a legal system in which the court, or a part of the court, is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case. This is distinct from an adversarial system, in which the role of the court is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense. Inquisitorial systems are used primarily in countries with civil legal systems, such as France and Italy, or legal systems based on Islamic law like Saudi Arabia, rather than in common law systems. It is the prevalent legal system in Continental Europe, Latin America, African countries not formerly under British rule, East Asia, Indochina, Thailand, and Indonesia. Most countries with an inquisitorial system also have some form of civil code as their main source of law.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to the trier of fact. If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted of the charges. The prosecution must in most cases prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. The opposite system is a presumption of guilt.
Trial in absentia is a criminal proceeding in a court of law in which the person who is subject to it is not physically present at those proceedings. In absentia is Latin for "in (the) absence". Its meaning varies by jurisdiction and legal system.
In law, a sentence is the punishment for a crime ordered by a trial court after conviction in a criminal procedure, normally at the conclusion of a trial. A sentence may consist of imprisonment, a fine, or other sanctions. Sentences for multiple crimes may be a concurrent sentence, where sentences of imprisonment are all served together at the same time, or a consecutive sentence, in which the period of imprisonment is the sum of all sentences served one after the other. Additional sentences include intermediate, which allows an inmate to be free for about 8 hours a day for work purposes; determinate, which is fixed on a number of days, months, or years; and indeterminate or bifurcated, which mandates the minimum period be served in an institutional setting such as a prison followed by street time period of parole, supervised release or probation until the total sentence is completed.
Witness impeachment, in the law of evidence of the United States, is the process of calling into question the credibility of an individual testifying in a trial. The Federal Rules of Evidence contain the rules governing impeachment in US federal courts.
High, middle and low justices are notions dating from Western feudalism to indicate descending degrees of judicial power to administer justice by the maximal punishment the holders could inflict upon their subjects and other dependents.
The Constitutio Criminalis Carolina is recognised as the first body of German criminal law (Strafgesetzbuch). It was also known as the Halsgerichtsordnung of Charles V.
Capital punishment in Germany has been abolished for all crimes, and is now explicitly prohibited by constitution. It was abolished in West Germany in 1949, in the Saarland in 1956, and East Germany in 1987. The last person executed in Germany was the East German Werner Teske, who was executed at Leipzig Prison in 1981.
United States criminal procedure derives from several sources of law: the baseline protections of the United States Constitution; federal and state statutes; federal and state rules of criminal procedure ; and state and federal case law. Criminal procedures are distinct from civil procedures in the US.
The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure contains the rules governing criminal procedure in every court in Italy. The Italian legal order adopted four codes since the Italian Unification. After the first two codes, in 1865 and 1913, the Fascist Government established in 1930 a new code adopting an inquisitorial system. In 1988 the Italian Republic adopted a new code, that could be considered to be somewhere in between the inquisitorial system and the adversarial system.
Following the common law system introduced into Hong Kong when it became a Crown colony, Hong Kong's criminal procedural law and the underlying principles are very similar to the one in the UK. Like other common law jurisdictions, Hong Kong follows the principle of presumption of innocence. This principle penetrates the whole system of Hong Kong's criminal procedure and criminal law. Viscount Sankey once described this principle as a 'golden thread'. Therefore, knowing this principle is vital for understanding the criminal procedures practised in Hong Kong.
Peter Landau was a German jurist, legal historian and expert on canon law.
The Evidence Act 2006 is an Act of the Parliament of New Zealand that codifies the laws of evidence. When enacted, the Act drew together the common law and statutory provisions relating to evidence into one comprehensive scheme, replacing most of the previous evidence law on the admissibility and use of evidence in court proceedings.