184 ing the highest state organs regulated the procedure. The complicated structure of decision-making can be demonstrated stepwise as follows. 1. Highcourt (or JDS); ahsolutio ab instantia and proposal to use confessional imprisonment 2. JDS’s statement on the High Court’s proposal 3. Governor General of Finland: statement 4. Secretary of State: presentation to the Emperor 5. Emperor: Decision 6. Secretary of State: informs of the decision 7. Governor General of Finland: informs of the decision 8. JDS: informs of the decision 9. High court; issues the decision in its own name 10.JDS: appeal instance First, the high court decided the matter preliminarily. If the high court wished to propose confessional imprisonment, the decision was not communicated to the parties at this stage. Instead, the proposal was referred to the JDS, which issued its own statement on the matter of confessional imprisonment. On the contrary, in these matters the Governor General and the Secretary of State appear to have acted as mere “mailboxes” by way of which the matter reached and was presented to the Emperor. The Governor General did not normally issue a statement of his own, and the Secretary of State only repeated the arguments of the JDS word for word. As compared to other administrational matters, then, the Governor General and the Secretary of State seem to have assumed a passive role.^^ It may be concluded, then, that the actual powder in cases of confessional imprisonment resided, bv and large, in the high courts and the JDS. When the Emperor’s rescript reached the high court by way of the Governor General, Secretary of State and theJDS, the high court’s decision was issued accordingly. A possibility of appeal to the JDS did remain, however. As the JDS had already formulated its stand in its former statement to the Emperor, the factual importance of the appeal was slight. Acquittals In the case material of this study, there are very few acquittals, although it is probable that practically all homicide crimes came before a court. The reason for this seems to be connected to the way the cases that reached theJDS were selected. Research by Lars-Otto Backman has demonstrated that many cases ended in acquittal by a high court, to which all homicide cases came by way of automatic referral.It is obvious that, on the average, these cases were the clearest ones as far as evidence was concerned, and that the ones that reached theJDS were, in general, supported by a stronger evidence. Furthermore, it is probable that in the kind of close-knit rural society, like nineteenth-century Cf. Kalleinen 1994. During all the Southern Ostrobothnian homicide cases in the first half of century, a rough 25%were completely acquitted (according to PS 17: 33). Backman 1984 pp. 180-183.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=