the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 238 I will take up three features of the criminal procedures at the Court of Appeal: Leuteration, judicial torture and the prohibition of appeals. Criminal cases (criminalia) were those carrying a corporal punishment. They were usually heard in larger groups, typically around ten cases at a time, one after another. Criminal cases left very little by way of text in the records, largely because no lawyers were involved. These cases had been decided in lower courts, which sent them to the Court of Appeals for leuteration. As no proper study on this important institution exists, a few words on its origins and variations are in place here. Leuteration(from “läutern,” to reform) was a medieval institution used at least in Saxony and was probably a legal transfer from there to Sweden. Leuterationhad two meanings. First, it could refer to the opportunity given to a party to a legal case – or even to a court of law – to improve the documents or utterances, or (in the case of a court) even its decision. Second, in a narrower sense, leuterationcould mean, as Benedict Carpzov explains, that the judge who had given the original decision was asked to explain or check his decision again. This could lead to a diminished punishment or to a harsher one.646 In the early part of the seventeenth century, when Carpzov wrote his Practica, the originally medieval leuterationwas already on the decline in Germany. Leuteration was giving way to Roman-canon appeal. However, leuterationcame to look rather different from what it had been in its land of origin. In Sweden, leuterationdid not depend on the petitions of the parties, but consisted of an automatic referral of serious criminal cases to a court of appeal. The higher court screened the decision and could – as in Saxony – either diminish or harshen the punishment, or let the lower court decision stand. Leuteration had a delaying effect: in other words, the lower court decision could not be enforced before the higher court re- turned the case with its leuteration decision. But leuteration did not, unlike a Roman-canon appeal, have a devolutive effect. Leuteration thus did not remove the case from the original court entirely. When a Swedish court of appeal had given its decision, it returned the case to the 646 Carpzov, Benedict 1690 Tit. VII p. 23. Little modern research exists onleuteration. See, however, Oestmann, Peter 2002. Criminal Procedures Compared: Leuteration, Judicial Torture and the Prohibition of Appeals
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