Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

benefit of clergy.

1. At common law, the right of a cleric not to be tried for a felony in the King's Court <in the Middle Ages, anyone who could recite the "neck verse" was granted the benefit of clergy>. 0 It was abolished in England in 1827 but survived even longer in some American states, such as South Carolina, where it was successfully claimed in 1855. State v. Bosse, 42 S.C.L. (3 Rich.) 276 (1855). See NECK VERSE. "Benefit of clergy was a remarkable privilege which, although now obsolete, was for centuries of great importance in criminal law. Some knowledge of it is even now essential for a proper understanding of common law crimes. After William the Conqueror separated the ecclesiastical from the secular courts, the clergy put forward the claim that all persons in holy orders should be exempt from secular jurisdiction in all proceedings, civil or criminal. Eventually the rule was established that 'clerks' of all kinds, who committed any of the serious crimes termed felonies, could be tried only in an ecclesiastical court, and therefore were only amenable to such punishments as that court could inflict. Any clerk accused of such crime was accordingly passed over to the bishop's court. He was there tried before a jury of clerks by the oaths of twelve compurgators; a mode of trial which usually ensured him an acquittal." J.W. Cecil Turner, Kenny's Outlines of Criminal Law 75 (16th ed. 1952).