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Criminal Justice in Ancient Times Ancient Athenian procedure assigned the trial of homicide cases to a special tribunal composed of the serving magistrates, called archons, and all previously commissioned archons. Meeting in the agora (marketplace) or Areopagus (a hill in Athens where the tribunal met), this court tried all premeditated homicides and heard constitutional cases. Portions of the Areopagus tribunal, presided over by an archon, dealt with lesser homicide matters. These quasi-religious courts did not deal with other criminal offenses, which were left to the disposition of individual magistrates.

With certain exceptions, both parties were put to death by stoning. Unlike other systems of Near Eastern law, Israelite criminal law did not permit the wronged husband to pardon his adulterous wife, because that would not make the criminal act clean. Should a free man engage in intercourse with a female slave betrothed to another, he was compelled to pay a fine, but no compensation was given to the betrothed husband of the adulterous slave. Fornication, or the unlawful sexual intercourse of two unmarried persons, was subject to mild sanctions.

Physical punishment by flogging was used for slaves but not for freemen; imprisonment was a rare punishment, the usual practice being to sell the convict into slavery. Criminal Justice in Ancient Times Rome Rome’s republican constitution provided ingenious checks on the unbridled exercise of judicial power. Consuls, as the two principal magistrates, shared authority over the major affairs of state; in office for only one year, each consul was limited by the need to obtain the consent of his colleague.