Posted on 12/04/2022 4:36:05 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1778, attainted Revolutionary War-era outlaw Josiah Phillips was hanged in Virginia.
Contrary to Randolph’s recollection, the execution took place according to a regular jury verdict convicting Philips for stealing 28 hats and five pounds of twine — felony theft by the Bloody Code inherited from England.
Even so, it was the Act of Attainder voted unanimously by the Virginia legislature that stuck in the popular memory, so much so that even the likes of Randolph, a lawyer by trade and later the first Attorney General of the independent United States, misstated* it as the proximate cause of Phillips’s execution.
Another inheritance from the mother country, Acts of Attainder — wherein the legislature declares some party guilty of a crime and declares punishment without benefit of trial — were going right out of style in the twilight of the 18th century. The eventual U.S. Constitution would flatly abolish the practice; Britain herself has not enacted one since 1798.
So it comes as some surprise to see that Phillips was outlawed** at the instigation of no less a person than old Mr. Inalienable Rights himself, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s Bill of Attainder gave Philips and his band a June 1778 deadline to turn themselves in voluntarily, or else they...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Now you can haul off a $900 TV and nobody blinks. What progress!
Touch my hat, I may wound you.
I understand, I have a well trained Stetson that’s old enough to drink.
They’re trying to do it to President Trump.
wherein the legislature declares some party guilty of a crime and declares punishment without benefit of trial
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