suum cuique tribuere – elsa trolle önnerfors 191 ism and fights. A criminal case with noble parties had to be brought before the appropriate district or town court, but the judgement was handed down by the appeal court.540 As mentioned above, the judicial privilege did not exempt the nobility from punishment, and in general they were not more lightly punished than commoners, albeit their punishments were different.541 In France, for example, corporal punishment for the nobility was less harsh than for commoners, but the fines were more severe. When a noble was sentenced for particularly ignoble crimes such as theft and fraud, he or she deserved a harsher punishment than acommoner. The nobility was excluded from some penalties while other punishments were reserved exclusively for the estate. Both noblemen and commoners could be sentenced to death, but the methods of execution differed. For example, a nobleman who had been sentenced to death had the right to be executed by the sword while commoners condemned to death were normally executed by axe or hanged (hanging in particular was regarded as ignoble).542 Thefts committed by nobles were few in the records of the Svea Court of Appeal, perhaps due to the fact that theft was regarded as such a disgraceful and ignoble crime. One of the few notes on a noble thief was to be found in a court case from 1690. Johan Schiller, a former attendant at one of the government commissions, was accused of stealing a sixteenthcentury document from the National Archives in Stockholm. At first, Schiller blamed his scrivener for the theft, and the scrivener also took the blame initially. But it was soon discovered who the real delinquent was. At the trial, Schiller considered the crime he was accused of to be insignificant, but the Svea Court of Appeal disagreed: theft was a severe crime, especially theft of the Government’s property by a civil servant who also was a noble. Since the Court of Appeal wanted to give Schiller a well-deserved punishment in order to create a cautionary example for other illdoers, he was sentenced to be pilloried for an hour in a square in Stockholm.543 Furthermore, Schiller was sentenced to a corporal punishment, which was also to be conducted in public. Schiller would then be expa540 1614 Ordinance of Judicial Procedure, paragraph 14, Kongl. stadgar, ed. Schmedeman, pp. 138-139. 541 Bush, Michael L. 1983 p. 67. 542 Bush, Michael L. 1983 p. 66; Olin, Gustav 1934 p. 811. 543 “[E]tt wählförtient Straff, och androm wahnartigom till exempel och åthwarning, ståå een tijma, för een på Torget Upreest Påhle,” judgement on 24 December 1690 (RA, SHA, B II a:61).
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