‘Cutting’ the Substantiation of a Trial and Remitting the Penalty Exemplified With Two Criminal Trials for Cattle Theft by the End of the 18th Century in the Kingdom of Chile”

Abstract

The work deals with applicable law to cattle-theft crime both by the Supplementary Castilian law and by provisions of the Chilean primary law, and emphasizes the importance for the Chilean Kingdom of the activities related with livestock breeding and the utilization of its sub-products. The main focus of this work is the study of the trying of two criminal proceedings for cattle-theft in 1792 and 1794, trials where public prosecutors clearly showed the guilty of the defendants, but that, and this is of paramount importance in the self-generated law in Chile, they finally were released despite all the aggravating circumstances. The purpose of this was to clear jails based on the fact that offenders had served a significant portion of their jail time, and on royal pardon.