# Stoning - what actually kills the person? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 28, 2014, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452 "2014-05-28T08:44:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/21 "2014-05-29T03:28:50Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > That’s called pressing to death, or “_la peine forte et dure_”. It was an inheritance from the English common law. > > If a person was tried and convicted, sometimes their entire estate would be confiscated. > > But, there could be no trial if the accused didn’t enter a plea. Some accusers, convinced they were going to be found guilty and executed, would choose to refuse to plead, and then be pressed. Even if they died, they hadn’t been convicted, so their property passed to their heirs. A strange mix of formalism and force. “We can’t try you until you enter a plea but we can torture you to death for not entering a plea.” Any idea when that changed to “Fine, let’s pretend you entered ‘not-guilty’ then.”? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/22 "2014-05-29T03:38:53Z")
It was weird, a good illustration of the formalism of the common law. I believe it was changed in one of the English Criminal Procedure Amendment Acts of the 19th century. If the accused refused to plead, the judge was given the power to direct the clerk to enter a plea of “not guilty.” That provision is still in the Criminal Code of Canada. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/23 "2014-05-29T03:47:10Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > A strange mix of formalism and force. “We can’t try you until you enter a plea but we can torture you to death for not entering a plea.” > > Any idea when that changed to “Fine, let’s pretend you entered ‘not-guilty’ then.”? In England, the common law practice of pressing as a response to refusal to plead was abolished by statute in 1772 (An Act for the more Effectual Proceeding Against Persons Standing Mute on their Arraignment for Felony or Piracy 12 Geo III c.20). That Act introduce a new rule; refusal to plead, unless due to “visitation by God”, was tantamount to a plea of guilty. A further Act of 1827 (Criminal Law Act 1827 7 & 8 Geo IV c.28) reversed the rule, and provided that refusal to plead was to be treated as a plea of not guilty. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/24 "2014-05-29T04:51:16Z")
Thanks **UDS** - I had forgotten about the 18th century “reform.” Was that the Act that made a distinction between “mute of malice” and “mute by visitation of God”? That is, if a person could not plead because they were a deaf-mute or some other physical cause, it was a not guilty plea, but conscious refusal to plead was treated as a guilty plea? The implications for the latter could be quite severe, given the number of felonies which carried the death penalty. A person who refused to plead may not have been aware that his refusal could result in him hanging. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/25 "2014-05-29T05:29:53Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Thanks **UDS** - I had forgotten about the 18th century “reform.” Was that the Act that made a distinction between “mute of malice” and “mute by visitation of God”? That is, if a person could not plead because they were a deaf-mute or some other physical cause, it was a not guilty plea, but conscious refusal to plead was treated as a guilty plea? Don’t know whether the 1772 Act was the source of that distinction, or made use of an already-established distinction, but I suspect the latter. The phenomenon of people being genuinely unable to plead, through physical or mental infirmity, must have been a familiar one. Wikipedia notes that in fact the practice of pressing those who refused to plead had more or less ceased by the early eighteenth century, which raises the question - how did they treat refusals to plead during the period between the lapse of that practice and 1772? I don’t know the answer to that, but I suspect it relied at least partly a fairly liberal use of a power to treat refusal to plead as evidence of lunacy or feeble-mindedness. (Of course, the problem of people refusing to plead might have been greatly reduced once they ended the practice of forfeiting the estates of convicted felons. But I don’t know when that was.) > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > The implications for the latter could be quite severe, given the number of felonies which carried the death penalty. A person who refused to plead may not have been aware that his refusal could result in him hanging. Well, presumably that possibility was pointed out to him, to encourage him to reconsider his stance. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/26 "2014-05-29T05:32:20Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Cite? Sorry, no cite. This is based on my recollections of reports at the time of Saudi executions. And, since Saudi Arabia hasn’t carried out any executions by stoning for more than thirty years, those reports are not easily googleable. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/27 "2014-05-29T05:59:35Z")
There are at least enough cites about the Saudi dump truck story easily found by searching “stoning saudi arabia dump truck” to demonstrate that it is a commonly told story anyway. None of them provide any documentary evidence but it isn’t implausible that they could be true. It would be a strange twist on traditional stoning though as part of the plan, at least in theory, is that no one person can be pinpointed as causing the death - like the way one random gun in a firing squad was sometimes loaded with a blank cartridge, or some electric chairs were set up with two activation levers so neither of the two guards knew if they were flipping the actual switch or a fake one. That said it is well documented that Saudi employs executioners who have no problem being the only guy holding a sword when someone is beheaded so… maybe. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452/28 "2014-05-29T06:26:41Z")
Blunt trauma. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stoning-what-actually-kills-the-person/689452.md?page=1)