Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England

This book explores the role of mens rea broadly defined as a factor in jury assessments of guilt and innocence from the early thirteenth through the fourteenth century - the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury. Drawing upon evidence from the plea rolls but also relying heavily upon non-legal textual sources such as popular literature and guides for confessors Elizabeth Papp Kamali argues that issues of mind were central to jurors'' determinations of whether a particular defendant should be convicted pardoned or acquitted outright. Demonstrating that the word ''felony'' itself connoted a guilty state of mind she explores the interplay between social conceptions of guilt and innocence and jury behavior. Furthermore she reveals a medieval understanding of felony that involved in its paradigmatic form three essential elements: an act that was reasoned was willed in a way not constrained by necessity and was evil or wicked in its essence.