In early December, the Dane lost the trial to the beavers: he wanted to receive compensation for the property damaged by the rodents, but in the end he himself was obliged for legal costs. Perhaps, had he lived several centuries earlier, the outcome of the case would have been completely different. "Lenta.ru" decided to recall the history of trials over animals from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Suffering Middle Ages
In the book of the historian Edward Evans "The Criminal Prosecution and the Death Penalty of Animals", published in 1903, more than two hundred trials of various animals are described. Most often, pets appeared before the court, although pests, for example, rats, were often hit.
In 1474, residents of the Swiss city of Basel and the surrounding villages gathered to watch the unusual execution. A rooster was sentenced to be burned on the Kohlenberg hill for committing an unprecedented unnatural crime: he dared to lay an egg. And every peasant knew that from the egg of a rooster, with which either the witch or Satan himself had sex, only a toad or a snake can appear, turning into a basilisk under the light of the sun - a terrible monster that can destroy the entire district with only a glance. The poor rooster was acquitted five hundred years later: in 1974, the Basel court corrected a miscarriage of justice when it became clear that birds can change sex due to an infectious disease.
Animal executions were often no less brutal than human executions. In 1386, in the city of Falaise, Normandy, France, a sow was sentenced to beating and hanging for killing a child. The animal was dressed up in a human suit and executed in the town square. This cost the state ten sous and ten deniers, not counting the new gloves for the executioner. Gloves were needed to show metaphorically: the executioner acts with clean hands and fulfills the will of Themis, and not just kills a pig in the manner of an ordinary butcher.
But sometimes even the most malevolent animals were acquitted if they had a good defender. At the beginning of the 16th century, Bartolomeo Chassenet stood up for the rats, which were found guilty of destroying all the barley in the province's barns by the Autun court in French Burgundy. The officials toured several granaries, where they read out their rights and obligations to the rats and announced the date of the hearing. The lawyer had to work hard to acquit the accused with such a bad reputation, who, moreover, had the audacity not to appear at the hearings against them.
At the first court session, Chassenet noted that since all the rats of the province are accused, then one subpoena is not enough: it is necessary to paste the appeals in all the towns and villages of Burgundy. The court considered this requirement fair, however, even after its fulfillment, the rats did not appear before the court at the indicated hour. Then Chassenet referred to the fact that his client had a long and dangerous journey ahead, and they were already ready to take a risk, but cats, deadly enemies waiting for them at every corner, prevented them. The lawyer recalled the right of a client not to appear in court if there is a threat to his life. According to some sources, he ordered each rat to be given a safety certificate and to make all the owners of cats in the city guarantee that their pets will not touch the rats. Of course, they did not agree to this, the next hearing was postponed indefinitely, and then the case was completely lost for centuries.
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Image: Public Domain / Wikimedia.
If the rats have already been justified, why wonder at the virtues of the donkey? When in 1750, already in modern times, a certain Jacques Ferron was caught committing adultery with a donkey in the French city of Vanves, the court sentenced to death for sodomy both an ardent lover and livestock. But the locals stood up for the donkey. According to the peasants, in all the four years that they have known her, she has been "virtuous and obedient." They drew up a whole petition, which was signed by a local priest, noting that "both in words and in deeds this is the most honest being." As a result, the donkey was acquitted as a victim of violence, and Ferron, who had sinned with her, was hanged.
Electric elephant execution
Unfortunately, even in the 20th century, the execution of animals was not abandoned everywhere. In 1963, in Tripoli, by a court order, 75 pigeons were killed, through which smugglers received money from accomplices from Italy, Greece and Egypt. The court found the birds "too skillful and dangerous to release them into the wild." The criminals who trained them were simply not fined too much.
Sometimes animals were executed without trial or investigation. At the end of 1902, visitors were invited to Coney Island Luna Park for an extraordinary performance - the execution of Topsy the elephant. Over the course of three years, she killed three people, including a trainer who trained her by burning her with a lighted cigarette. They wanted to hang the elephant, but animal advocates insisted on a more humane procedure, demanding that only the press and a minimum of guests be present at the execution itself.
Topsy. Photo: Public Domain / Wikimedia.
As a result, they decided to execute Topsy with an electric current, having previously fed them with carrots with potassium cyanide. On January 4, 1903, the sentence was carried out. The death of the elephant after ten seconds of agony was filmed by representatives of Thomas Edison's Edison Manufacturing Co., who developed the execution tool. The video was called "Electric execution of an elephant."
Still, most of the animal trials in the 20th century were more amusing than tragic. On January 23, 1962, a monkey named Macao was brought to trial in Paris. She ran away from her owner's apartment, climbed up to the neighbors who were not at home, ate lipstick there, broke several expensive trinkets and stole the box where, according to the victims, the precious ring was kept.
The owner of the monkey assured that there was no ring, and expressed his readiness to return the empty box. He argued that the monkey could not open the box in any way. The judge ordered the monkey to be brought in, and before everyone's eyes it demonstrated the ability to open a wide variety of boxes. As a result, the owner of the monkey had to pay for all the damage caused.
In 1924, all American newspapers covered the Labrador Pepe. This dog, according to journalists, bitten the beloved cat of the wife of Pennsylvania Governor Ginford Pinchot. The politician flew into a rage and immediately filed a lawsuit. The dog had no lawyers, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The dog was even photographed with the number C2559 around his neck, like an ordinary prisoner. However, in prison, Pep did not suffer: he was allowed to change inmates at will, and when the inmates boarded the bus in the morning, which took them to the construction site of another prison, the dog jumped into him when the guards called his number.
Pep. Image: mdig.com.br
In 1930, he died in prison from old age after six years of imprisonment (42 dog years). However, back in 1926, the New York Times restored Pep's good name and proved that all this is just a beautiful legend. Firstly, Pep did not kill the cat, but simply tore apart the politician's sofa, and secondly, he was sent to prison not as a punishment, but to work. Pinchot believed that prisoners could and should be corrected, so he sent his Labrador there to brighten up their leisure. And he came up with a story about a cat because he feared for his reputation.
Baboon and camera
Animals are judged in our time, but now their rights are protected much better. And even if they lose the case, there is someone to stand up for them. In 2008, in Macedonia, a bear wanted to feast on honey and tried to climb into an apiary to the beekeeper Zoran Kiseloski. It was not so: the beekeeper noticed a clubfoot guest and decided to scare him. He played the turbo-folk hit of the Serbian star Tsetza at full volume through the speakers, turned on the spotlights and made a light show.
The confrontation between Kiseloska and the bear lasted for several weeks, but the man was let down by the technique: the electric generator broke down, and the music stopped. It was then that the bear attacked the hives. The court of the city of Bitola found him guilty of theft, but the bear did not have an owner, besides, it belonged to a protected species, so the state pledged to pay the beekeeper 140 thousand dinars (approximately 123.5 thousand rubles). The further fate of the bear is unknown.
In 2016, a dog named Lady was tried in Dusseldorf. The mongrel was accused of scaring twelve sheep to death. In 2011, the granddaughter of the owner of the dog, a professional dog handler, walked with Lady without a leash. Seeing a flock of sheep, Lady accidentally ran into its very midst. For some time she could not get out, and she barked loudly with fear.
Lady. Photo: Düsseldorf court.
After the incident, ten animals from his flock died and two lambs were born dead, according to the sheep owner. The veterinarian named stress as the cause of their death, so the farmer demanded compensation of 2,900 euros (approximately 201.5 thousand rubles). The owner denies the accusations, claiming that Lady is a very good and calm dog, fully living up to her name. She also works as a therapy dog in a nursing home. And the girl walking with the Lady assures that the shepherd tried to drive the dog out of the herd with the help of a metal cane and more than once walked over the sheep. Against the farmer is the fact that this is not the first time he has sued dog owners. The judge has not yet issued a verdict in this case.
Perhaps the most confusing animal case of the 21st century is the monkey's copyright lawsuit on his selfie. In 2011, South Wales photographer David Slater traveled to Indonesia to photograph crested baboons. During one of the filming, he pre-installed the camera and equipment, put aside the remote release and walked away. The monkeys became interested in the camera, decided to play with it and took some pictures of themselves. The publication of the photos sparked a heated debate when the copyright holder of the Caters News Agency asked them to remove one of the bloggers.
The blogger refused, citing the fact that the photo was taken by the monkey herself, and not Slater. Later, the photos were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (one of the projects under the auspices of Wikipedia), and Slater said that he suffered financial losses from this. However, he did not sue: in 2014, the American Copyright Bureau admitted that the picture did not belong to him, since it was taken by a monkey. Animal rights activists from PETA have filed a lawsuit to transfer the rights to the photograph to the author, the baboon Naruto. To this, the photographer caustically noticed that the picture shows a female. In September 2017, PETA lost the court, but Slater promised to give 25 percent of the money earned from the photo to the reserve where he filmed.
Returning to the beginning of the story, let us recall the unlucky Dane Find Andersen-Frudahl, who lost the case to the beavers. Unlike the medieval order, he had to sue not the animals themselves, but the Danish Nature Conservation Agency. And the defendants - not to come up with reasons why the beavers did not appear in court, but to restore the damage caused by the animals. In addition, in the end, the court's decision had nothing to do with the beavers: the plaintiff had to pay four thousand euros (278.2 thousand rubles) in compensation for legal costs.
Ekaterina Klimushkina