New at Reason: Radley Balko on Trial by Ordeal

February 1, 2010

In the Dark Ages, guilt or innocence was sometimes determined by ordeal, a painful ritual in which the accused was asked to submerge his arm in boiling water, carry pieces of hot iron, or dunked in a frigid lake or stream. If the accused was innocent, the thinking went, God would protect him from harm. But as Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko writes, a new paper from economist Pete Leeson argues that ordeals were actually surprisingly accurate at separating the guilty from the innocent, and it was the citizenry's very superstitions that made the process so successful.

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