Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

(presumably on a military adventure). This offense had the most procedural peculiarities, most notably a provision to give Roman advocates to foreign plaintiffs, and some opportunity for the prosecution to subpoena witnesses. The penalty for the core offense was to pay back twice the amount taken, so there had to be a second hearing after a guilty verdict to establish the amount of damages. Homicide . In early times, homicide seems to have been a criminal offense only under a few circumstances: using of poi son, killing a near relative, and (later) having some connection to organized crime. The recognition of murder in general as an offense seems not to have happened until perhaps 81 bc. Even after this time, there seems to have been an emphasis on prosecutions for the kinds of killings just mentioned and for a fourth special type, so-called judicial murder, that is, the abuse of the criminal process to bring about someone’s death. The punishment was “capital” in the sense described earlier. Vis . The Latin name for this offense means simply “force” or “violence,” but the scope of the crime seems to have been much narrower. Prosecutions for vis did not arise from just any use of violence (say, a tavern brawl or a mugging), but only from those that were “against the state.” That is, the violence had to have a clear political aim or be on such a scale (a riot more than an assault) as to take on political implications. Over time, some individual acts seem to have been specified by the statute or by explanatory decrees of the Senate (e.g., seizing public places, stirring up the troops), but the basic definition remained abstract and vague. This meant it was subject to

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