Illustration from Chambers Book of Days depicting a sow and her piglets being tried for the murder of a child. The trial allegedly took place in 1457, the mother being found guilty and the piglets acquitted. Wikimedia photo
Animal Trial
Animal trial, as in legal history, was the criminal trial of a non-human animal (Wikipedia). The majority of such trials as recorded occurred in Europe from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth. Just like humans,…