Evans, E.P. The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1906. x, 384pp. Reprinted 1998 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

LCCN 98-12801. ISBN 1-886363-52-8. Cloth. $75. * This pioneering work in English brings together an amazing assemblage of court cases in which animals have been named as defendants--chickens, rats, field mice, bees, gnats, and (in 34 recorded instances) pigs, among others--providing insight into such modern issues as animal rights, capital punishment, and social and criminal theory. Evans suggests an intriguing distinction between trials of specific animals or particular crimes (the "murder" of an infant by a pig, for example) and trials of animals for larger, catastrophic events such as plagues and infestations. In the latter case, Evans suggests a parallel to witchcraft. "In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the Church of the Holy Trinity in that city.

This curious painting no longer exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved" (Introduction, 17). Beginning with an illustration of this scene as envisioned in Arthur Mangin's L'Homme et la Bete and a copy of Josse de Damhouder's woodcut of "The Execution of the Sow," from Praxis Rerum Criminalium (Antwerp, 1562).