Charles I Quotes
By what authority do you try me?
Charles I was tried by Parliament but at the time there was the concept of Royal Impunity and there was no existing crime that he could be charged with despite the murder of many of his citizens. Cooke established the legal precedent making Tyranny a crime. See {624032}.
Charles I, 1600-1649, King of Great Britain & Ireland, Statement to the Prosecutor, John Cooke, 1641
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Charles I had caused the death of his subjects with impunity and was called to account. However, the English Parliament did not know what specific crime the King had committed. Kings had executed people, guilty of crimes and otherwise, for centuries. For what could a king be accountable. Cooke developed the crime of Tyranny and drew up and presented the indictment for that. The King was found guilty and executed. This was the first time in legal history that a ruler was called to account for crimes committed against his own people. It became the foundation for many trials thereafter including that of Saddam Hussein in 2006.
Americans are divided as to whether this should be encouraged and helped or not.
And let the sheriffs who have arrested them bring them before the justice without any other summons.
This assize is generally considered to be the first written specification of due process in English Common Law.
This is the classic argument given by those who would deny a defendant the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The belief that an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police is refuted by the many cases of innocent men being convicted by evidence they have given in the belief that they were innocent, and served long jail sentences only to later be proved by DNA evidence that they could not possibly have been guilty. Since Nott’s day, society has not only found many cases where honest error was made by the police or prosecutors, but many where there was venal prosecutorial misconduct and defendants were jailed even though the authorities were aware of evidence of innocence and kept it secret. There have been a number of these cases where a defendant was on death row and about to be executed when it was found he was innocent. Probably there have been men wrongly executed. See {629444} for a probable example.
It is surprising that these ideas would come from one of the most autocratic powerful monarch in the world at the time. However there were many very liberal influences on her from Europe. This set of proposals she even sent to Voltaire to get his feedback and criticism.
Reaction to the indictments of several of his political associates who were subsequently convicted after this statement:
This is one of the many statements of President Bush that contributed to his reputation as a polarizing politician. His supporters turned to this statement to illustrate that Bush was a supporter of the Constitution and civil liberties by urging the nation not to engage in vigilantism or give vent to their stereotypic views of minorities. Detractors took the same statement as a perfect example of Bush’s assault on Constitutional freedoms. Law enforcement does not determine guilt or innocence in our system. Police and prosecutors in America do not determine guilt or innocence; juries do. They argue that the Bush administration law enforcement policies are designed to have law enforcement usurp more and more of this facet of criminal justice.
Appeals to Providence included Trial by Fire, Trial by Water and related Trial by Ordeal. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal for explanations of these.
Several years before the Battle of Bunker Hill, revolutionary activity had already broken out in the American colonies—See {634132} for an example. This law gave the British authorities much more “clout” in dealing with the “seditious” American activities. It protected English law enforcement officials from being tried in local Colonial courts for murder or assault in putting down insurrections. George Washington and other Patriots were outraged over this law. See {634131}.
He was one of the few “national security hawks” who was willing to place this issue in the public table. In the 21st Century, there were some Muslims living in Democratic countries who were or had just become radical Islamic extremist jihadist by religious belief and philosophy. Some would preach or advocate violence in terrorism against Democracy and the west. Many of these people with radical Islamic beliefs would give material aid and comfort to terrorists and some would themselves engage in terrorist activities themselves. When they did, it was too late to prevent tragedies. So there was this population of emotional and intellectual terrorists who could act on their beliefs at any moment. These are what Hayden referred to as the “not yet guilty”. Preventive detention could protect against serious terrorist attacks. But the legal system of virtually every democracy had no legal bases to incarcerate or move against anyone for his/her beliefs or speech. Criminal charges required action other than thoughts, beliefs or speech. But by waiting until there is terrorist action, the law enforcement authorities give up the ability to prevent the terrorist action. Some were advocating changes in this fundamental and traditional distinction of law enforcement.
- Born: November 19, 1600
- Died: January 30, 1649
- Nationality:
- Profession:
Charles I was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603 (as James I), he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1612 on the death of his elder brother Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years later, he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France.
