Legal Definition and Related Resources of Benefit Of Clergy

Originally, the exemption from the jurisdiction of secular courts accorded to clergymen over whom only the ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction. Afterwards, the term denoted the exemption from capital punishment for clergymen or clerks convicted of felonies, who were then handed over to the ecclesiastical courts for trial . The benefit was in course of time extended to the laymen who had to read a Latin psalm correctly in order to be entitled to the exemption. The layman could claim it only once. The benefit of clergy was not applicable to certain crimes, such as high treason . The abuse of this process eventually led to its abolition in 1827.

In English law. An exemption of the punishment of death, which the laws impose on the commission of certain crimes, on the culprit demanding it. By modern statutes, benefit of clergy was rather a substitution of more mild punishment for the punishment of death. A clergyman was exempt from capital punishment toties quoties, as often as, from acquired habit, or otherwise, he repeated the same species of offense. The laity, provided they could read, were exempted only for a first offense ; for a second, though of an entirely different nature, they were hanged. Among the laity, however, there was this distinction: Peers and peeresses were discharged for their first fault without reading, or any punishment at all; commoners, if of the male sex, and readers, were branded in the hand. Women commoners had no benefit of clergy. Benefit of clergy was latterly granted, not only to the clergy, as was formerly the case, but to all persons. The benefit of clergy seems never to have been extended to the crime of high treason, nor to have embraced misdemeanors inferior to felony. See 1 Chit. Crim. Law, 667, 668; 4 Bl. Comm. c. 28; 1 Bish. Crim. Law, §§ 622624. But this privilege, improperly given to the clergy, because they had more learning than others, was abolished by St. 7 Geo. IV. c. 28, § 6. By the act of congress of April 30, 1790, it is provided (section 30) that the benefit of clergy shall not be used or allowed upon conviction of any crime for which, by any statute of the United States, the punishment is, or shall be declared to be, death. In some early state decisions, the right was recognized in the United States (1 Murph. [N. C] 147; 4 Strobh. [S. C] 372), while in others it is held to be obsolete (1 Blackf. [Ind.] 66; 3 Minn. 246).

Browse or run a search for Benefit Of Clergy in the American Encyclopedia of Law, the Asian Encyclopedia of Law, the European Encyclopedia of Law, the UK Encyclopedia of Law or the Latin American and Spanish Encyclopedia of Law.

Benefit Of Clergy in Historical Law

You might be interested in the historical meaning of this term. Browse or search for Benefit Of Clergy in Historical Law in the Encyclopedia of Law.

Search for legal acronyms and/or abbreviations containing Benefit Of Clergy in the Legal Abbreviations and Acronyms Dictionary.

You might be also interested in these legal terms:

What does Benefit Of Clergy mean in American Law?

The definition of Benefit Of Clergy in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

Sometimes called “privilege of clergy” (“privilegium clericale”). At least formally, all felonies were capital offenses at common law. Various evasions of such rigor predictably developed; one was “benefit of clergy.” As a result of the same great twelfth-century church-state dispute that led to the murder of Archbishop Becket at the hands of Henry II’s knights, the principle developed that criminal jurisdiction over ordained clergy belonged to the church courts. The procedure evolved that the defendant would be tried as if he were a layman but then, if he could establish his ecclesiastical status, he would be turned over to the church. Since the church tried by wager of law, however, and its penalties were often farcical, benefit of clergy actually came to be for its beneficiaries a practical exemption from criminal penalties. By the sixteenth century, indeed, the practice of turning the defendant over to the church was abandoned; he was just set free (though the justices could imprison him up to a year).

It thus became literally a matter of life and death to identify who “clergy” were. The definitional aspect of this problem seems to have been settled by treating as clergy almost any church functionary, ordained or not. The empirical problem was handled by testing whether the claimant could read, with the assumption being that if he could, he was a clergyman. As a practical matter this led to extending the privilege to all literate people and, since the same fragment of the same psalm (see neck verse) was usually chosen as the test text, a little preparation could be a life saver even for the functionally illiterate. In the sixteenth century peers (literate or not) got a similar privilege, in the seventeenth century parliament extended the privilege to some women (who by no stretch of the imagination could be ordained), and by the eighteenth century, one no longer had to prove literacy.

Benefit of clergy was not finally abolished in England until a statute of 1827. One of the earliest U.S. statutes declared it inapplicable in U.S. criminal law in 1790.

Browse

You might be interested in these references tools:

This definition of Benefit Of Clergy Is based on the The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary . This definition needs to be proofread..

Vocabularies (Semantic Web Information)

<

Resources

See Also

Further Reading

L. C. Gabel, Benefit of Clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages (1929, repr. 1969); J. R. Cameron, Frederick William Maitland and the History of English Law (1961).

benefit of clergy.