DEODAND, in English law, any personal chattel which, hav ing moved ad mortem or been the immediate cause of the death of any reasonable creature, was forfeited to the king for pious uses. It was originally designed as an expiation for the souls of those suddenly snatched away by violent death, and was abolished by 9/io Vict. C. 62. This imputation of homicidal guilt to inanimate objects or the lower animals is of great antiquity and led in the middle ages to the judicial trial of animals or things for man slaughter. In England, subsequent to the Reformation, deodands were distributed as alms by the king's high almoner, though more recently they were regarded as mere forfeitures.
If a horse or other animal in motion killed a person, whether infant or adult, or if a cart ran over him or a tree fell upon him, it was forfeited as a deodand and its value was appraised by the jury. It was at one time held that if death were caused by falling from a cart or a horse at rest, the law made the chattel a deodand only if the person killed were an adult, not if he were below years of discretion; but in later times this distinction was abolished. Blackstone says "where a thing not in motion is the occasion of a man's death, that part only which is the immediate cause is for feited; as if a man be climbing up the wheel of a cart, and is killed by falling from it, the wheel alone is deodand." Whereas, if the cart were in motion, not only the wheel but all that moves along with it (as the cart and loading) are forfeited. On the other hand, if a man riding on the shafts of a wagon fall to the ground and break his neck, the horses and wagon only are forfeited, and not the loading, because it in no way contributed to his death. Where a man is killed by a vessel at rest, in fresh water, the cargo is not deodand; where the vessel is under sail, hull and cargo are both deodand. But accidents on the high seas, or on an arm of the sea, did not cause forfeiture "because mariners are continually exposed to so many perils that the law imputes misfortunes hap pening there rather to them than to the ship." The finding of a jury was necessary to constitute a deodand, and the death must take place within a year and a day of the accident. The investiga tion of the value of the instrument by which death was caused at one time occupied an important place among the provisions of English criminal law. More recently these forfeitures became ex tremely unpopular; and jurors, with the connivance of judges, found deodands of trifling value, so as to defeat what was regarded as an inequitable claim.