Today, if ananimal kills a human being, it is often put to sleep so it doesntinjure someone else. In medieval times, a killer animal was put ontrial for similar crimes. Sound weird? It gets more interesting.Animals who got in trouble the most were pigs. In 1266, a pig was triedin Fontenay-aux Roses (near Paris) and convicted of killing a child.Its sentence? Death by burning. Another pig (a sow) who got in troublewas dressed in mens clothes and publicly executed in a French village.The year was 1386. Somefolks think stories about these trials are just folk tales. It isimpossible to fathom how a prosecutor could prove criminal intent onthe part of an animal defendant! How would a non-thinking beingsuddenly become capable of thinking?Onthe other hand, a respected French jurist and criminal lawyer wroteabout animal trials in 1531. Bartholomew Chassenee recorded the kind oflegal analysis applied during the centuries when the practice was used.People thought Satan was acting through animals when they destroyedhuman life. Sometimes the guilty animals were even excommunicated bythe Catholic Church.Lestwe in the modern age get too smug about unenlightened medievalpeople, its useful to keep in mind the last known case of a defendantanimal standing trial. It happened in Switzerland, in 1906.