APPEAL, (from the French verb act. appeller,) in English law, also signifies a criminal prosecution at the suit of a private individual, in order to obtain the inflic tion of punishment on account of the particular injury suffered, rather than for the offence against the public. In this sense, the term is analogous to the aceusatio of the civilians.
This mode of prosecution is still in force, but very the in use. It probably originated in those times when great offences were generally expiated by payment of i a sum of money, called a weregild, to the person n jured. This custom seems to have been common to us with other northern nations, (Stiernh. de jure Suen.), and to have been derived from the Germans, among whom, according to Tacitus, homicidium certo amen torunt ac pecorum numero ; recipitgue satisfactionem universa donuts." (De Mor. Ger. c. 21.) It appears to obtain among most semi-barbarous nations, where the nature of criminal justice is but imperfectly under stood, and where offences are regarded rather with a view to private injury than to public detriment. In the Turkish empire, even murder is never prosecu ted by the officers of government. It is the business of the next relations to revenge the slaughter of their kins men ; and if they rather choose (which is generally the ease) fo compound the matter for money, nothing fur ther is said about it. (Letters of Lady M. W. Monta gue.) By the Irish Brehon law, in case of murder, the brehon, or judge, was used to compound between the murderer and the friends of the deceased who prosecut ed him, by causing the malefactor to pay a certain re compense, called eriach. And thus, by our old Saxon laws, particularly those of king Athelstan, (Judie. civ. Lund. Wilk. 71.), the several weregilds for homicide were established in progressive order, from the death of the ceorl, or peasant, up to the king himself. And in the laws of king Henry I., (c. 12), we find an account of what other crimes were then redeemable by weregild, and what were not. During the continuance of this cus tom, therefore, a process was certainly given, for re covering the weregild to the person to whom it was due ; and when, by degrees, these offences became no lon ger redeemable, the private process was still continued, in order to insure the punishment of the offender, though the party injured was allowed no pecuniary compensa tion for the offence.
Although it would thus appear that appeals were of the nature of private prosecutions on account of some heinous injury committed against an individual, yet it was also anciently permitted that any subject might appeal another of high treason, either in the courts of common law, or in parliament, or (for treasons commit ted beyond the seas) in the court of the high constable and marshal. The cognisance of appeals, in the latter court, still continues in force; and so late as 1631, there Was a trial by battel awarded in the court of chivalry, on such an appeal of treason. But the first was virtually abolished by the statutes 5 Edw. III. c. 9, and 25 Edw.
III. c. 24, and the second expressly, by statute I Hen.
IV. 9. 14; so that the only appeals now in force are those of felony and mayhem. (Blackst. Corn. book iv. c. 23. Jacob's Law Diet. v. .rippeat.) Mr Kyd, the learned editor of Comyn's Digest, observes, that the appeal of treason does not appear to have been taken away by any statute: the law, however, relative to such appeals, has long been in desuetude, and is now consi dered as obsolete.
An appeal of felony may be brought for crimes com mitted either against the parties themselves or their relations. Of the former kind are appeals of larceny, or robbery, and appeals of arson. Of the latter descrip tion is the appeal of murder, or manslaughter. The appeal of rahe stems to partake of the nature of both, as it may be prosecuted either by the person ravished or by her relations. The crime of nzayhenz is accounted no felony: appeals of mayhem, therefore, are analogous to actions of trespass, by which nothing is recovered but damages.