Significance
In 1637, American colonial law regarding murder followed English common law, the basis of which was essentially biblical. The Bible was clear that the punishment for murder was death. Massachusetts law followed Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, which offered no other alternative. Any person killing another in "anger or cruelty of passion" shall be put to death. Massachusetts's common law made no distinction between insanity and criminal behavior. The only punishment legally available for Dorothy Talbye was the death penalty.
In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties was written as a first step at developing a body of law for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It codified the following, giving some allowance for special situations, although it may not have helped Dorothy Talbye: "Children, Idiots, Distracted persons, and all that are strangers, or new comers to our plantation, shall have such allowances and dispensations in any cause whether Criminal or other as religion and reason require."
Read more about this topic: Dorothy Talbye Trial
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
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