295 lenience.”^ The judgement was merciless when a hopelessly incorrigible criminal was eliminated once and for all bv execution, but it was mild when a realistic assessment indicated hope of reintegration. In this combination of cruelty and lenience, we can once again detect the conflicting messages from the ideological level: the Old Testament injunction to wipe out the sinner and let him die the death, and the NewTestament ideal of forgiveness and mercy in a Christian spirit. In the resolutions of the high court there are examples of the choice between mercy and death being simply justified with respect for human life, and there are signs of hesitation in the face of the death penalty, with doubts about whether it was in proportion to the crime. The lenience of the court was not general, however, but varied according to the crime concerned. Of the 48 death sentences in the period 1681—1699, four concerned sexual offences, three thefts, and one blasphemy, but forty concerned crimes of violence. The court thus showed much greater lenience to thieves and sexual offenders than to violent criminals. In the case of the latter, the cruel demands of the Old Testament of a life for a life prevailed, although this did not rule out mercy for a number of people guilty of manslaughter and infanticide. In viewof the fact that the use of the death penalty declined by 70 per cent during a space of sixty years, and that it was the high court which settled the issue in 94 per cent of the cases, it can nevertheless be observed that the penal law was being humanized under the leadership of the high court. Other observers have described the penal justice of the late seventeenth century as inhumane.^ The fact remains, however, that the number of confirmed sentences was 70 per cent fewer than in the 1630s and 33 per cent fewer than in the 1650s. Humane objections to the death penalty were also expressed in the examinations submitted by the lower courts, where there was often a plea for mercy for the convict, with mitigating circumstances being cited. The humanization of penal justice was also supported by those who had to administer it in the lower courts, and by the “common people” who had to suffer the consequences of the application of penal justice. The lower courts could also pass on the opposite message, with requests that a death penalty be confirmed and the convict really executed. When the high court revoked or confirmed the sentences referred to it, then, they often agreed with the views and wishes of the lower courts. It has been said that the high court lacked respect for the law when it so often departed from the letter of the law and passed milder sentences.^ The author interprets this lack of respect otherwise, seeing it instead as a desire to ^ Eva Österberg & Dag Lindström 1988, pp. 34 f. See also the section “Hovrätten och lagen” above. ^ Gustav Olin 1934, pp. 842 f. ^ Ibid., p. 843.
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