Suicide in Seventeenth-Century Sweden: The Crime and Legal Praxis in the Lower Courts

Abstract

Tutkimus käsittelee itsemurharikollisuutta ja itsemurhien tutkintaa alioikeuksissa Ruotsissa 1600-luvulla. Keskiössä on itsemurharikoksen käsittely ja alioikeusprosessi Ruotsin ja Suomen valikoitujen maaseutupitäjien ja kaupunkien alioikeuksissa. Itsemurhien oikeudellista käsittelyä tarkastellaan sekä normatiivisella tasolla (lainsäädäntö) että käytännön tasolla (syytteeseenpano, tutkinta, tulkinta ja tuomiot) maaseudun käräjillä ja kaupunkien raastuvanoikeuksissa. Samalla tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan itsemurharikosten oikeudellisen käsittelyn kautta alioikeuksien käytännön toimintoja, alioikeusprosessissa tapahtuneita mahdollisia muutoksia ja ns. oikeudellisen vallankumouksen ilmenemistä ja toteutumista suurvalta-ajan Ruotsissa. Vuosisataa pidetään vallan ja hallinnon keskittymisen, byrokratisoitumisen sekä oikeudenkäytön ammattimaistumisen aikana ja murroskautena, jolloin oikeudenkäyttö ja valta alioikeuksissa siirtyi entistä enemmän paikallisyhteisöiltä kruunun ja keskusjohdon edustajien käsiin. Oikeus- tai rikoshistoriassa kuitenkin harvemmin tarkastellaan alioikeuksien toimintaa ruohonjuuritasolla. Tutkimus tuo esiin, kuinka monivaiheinen rikostutkinta toteutettiin käytännön tasolla ja kuinka paikallisyhteisön rooli säilyi ratkaisevana alioikeustutkinnoissa.

Itsemurha kriminalisoitiin Ruotsin valtakunnassa ensimmäisen kerran vuonna 1442 kootussa Kuningas Kristoferin maanlaissa, joka saatettiin yleisesti voimaan vuonna 1608. Lain seurauksena epäilyttäviä kuolemantapauksia tutkittiin käräjillä ja raastuvanoikeuksissa, joissa lähinnä todistajia kuulemalla selvitettiin epäillyn vainajan kuolintapa ja mielentila. Rangaistukset kohdistettiin itsemurhaajan ruumiiseen: pyövelin tuli viedä mieleltään terveet metsään ja polttaa jäännökset roviolla, ja mieleltään sairaat tuli lain mukaan haudata kirkkomaan ulkopuolelle. Tosin kuin monin paikoin muualla Euroopassa, joiden esimerkkiä muutoin pitkälti seurattiin itsemurhan kriminalisoinnissa, Ruotsissa teosta tuomitun omaisuutta ei takavarikoitu. Lainsäädäntöä täydennettiin ja oikeus- ja rangaistuskäytännöt muuttuivat 1600-luvun aikana erityisesti eurooppalaisten vaikutteiden tuloksena.

Itsemurhan oikeusprosessi alkoi, kun epäilyttävä kuolemantapaus ilmiannettiin maalliselle viranomaiselle ja tapaus asetettiin syytteeseen. Monien ehtojen ja edellytysten piti täyttyä, jotta itsemurhatapaus päätyi alioikeuteen. Syytteeseenpano riippui pitkälti paikallisväestön intresseistä, sillä viranomaiset olivat riippuvaisia lähiomaisten ja yhteisön ilmiannoista. Riskitekijät, jotka katkaisivat tiedonkulun ja estivät tapauksen onnistuneen syytteeseenpanon, toteutuivat todennäköisemmin perifeerisillä alueilla kuin tiheämmin asutuilla keskusalueilla. Periferioissa viranomaisten toiminta- ja vastuualueet olivat suurempia, mikä hankaloitti tiedonvälitystä ja virallisen sosiaalisen kontrollin ja valvonnan toteuttamista. Käytännössä paikallisyhteisöjen sisäinen epävirallinen sosiaalinen kontrolli oli keskiössä rikosten syytteeseenpanon kannalta. Alioikeusprosessin käynnistyminen edellytti kaikissa vaiheissa paikallisyhteisöjen osallistumista ja yhteistyötä. Tutkimuksen laaja tapausaineisto viittaa siihen, että itsemurhatapausten määrä moninkertaistui vuosisadan jälkipuoliskolla ja erityisesti 1680- ja 1690-luvuilla. Rikostapausten ja -tuomioiden määrän lisääntymisestä huolimatta itsemurhailmiön yleistymisestä ei ole selkeitä todisteita. Tutkimus osoittaa, kuinka rikosasteen muutos liittyy enemmänkin lähdeaineiston säilyvyyteen ja erilaisiin hallinnollisiin, kulttuurisiin ja väestöllisiin muutoksiin sekä tuomiovaltaepäselvyyksiin, jotka vaikuttivat itsemurhien syytteeseenpanoon.

Itsemurhien oikeustutkinta kuolinsyy- ja mielenterveysmäärittelyineen oli hankala ja monivaiheinen prosessi. Syytteellepanon tapaan myös alioikeustutkinta edellytti yhteistyötä paikallisyhteisön, vainajan omaisten ja virkamiesten välillä. Lääkärien ja muiden asiantuntijoiden puuttuessa kuolinsyiden ja -tapojen sekä mielentilan määrittely perustui paikallisväestön, erityisesti omaisten, naapurien ja pastorin, todistajanlausuntoihin. Keskiaikaisen lain tiukkaa kirjainta pidettiin vanhentuneena, ja Ruotsin hovioikeuksien esimerkkejä seuraten sekä toisaalta paikallisia tarpeita kuunnellen alioikeudet tulkitsivat sitä joustavasti. Laki oli esimerkiksi hyvin tarkka sen suhteen, kuka itsemurhan tehnyt voitiin katsoa mielisairaaksi ja siten lievempään rangaistusmuotoon oikeutetuksi; silti alioikeudet tulkitsivat vaatimuksia ’’täydestä hulluudesta’’ vapaammin ja langettivat mielisairaan tuomioita esimerkiksi melankoliasta kärsineille, kuumehoureisille ja alaikäisille. Lopulliset rangaistusmuodot lieventyivät, kun hovioikeudet, joille itsemurharikokset alistettiin, luopuivat ruumiin polttamisesta ja langettivat metsähautauksia tervejärkisille. Osa itsemurhaajista sai hautasijankin, tosin hiljaisen eli seremoniattoman hautauksen syrjään kirkkomaan pohjoisosiin.

Kuolemantapausten luokittelu itsemurhiksi, onnettomuuksiksi tai ns. epäselviksi tapauksiksi ja mielentilojen luokittelu oli alioikeuksissa tulkinnanvaraista, vaihteli tapauskohtaisesti ja oli usein neuvottelukysymys. Koska alioikeuksissa kohdattiin itsemurhatapauksia suhteellisen harvoin ja selkeä normisto puuttui, tulkinta perustui toisaalta tuomarina toimineen mahdolliseen kokemukseen ja koulutukseen ja toisaalta pitkälti lautakunnissa ja raastuvanoikeuksissa toimineiden paikallisten talonpoikien ja porvareiden mielipiteisiin. Ns. oikeudellisen vallankumouksen piirteistä ja vaikutuksista on havaittavissa selkeitä merkkejä itsemurhatapausten alioikeuskäsittelyissä. Luonnollisesti hovioikeuksien perustaminen merkitsi sitä, että muiden vakavien rikosten tapaan itsemurhien tuomiot ja pöytäkirjat tuli ennen tuomion toimeenpanoa alistaa hovioikeuden tarkastettaviksi. Alioikeuksien pöytäkirjat yhdenmukaistuivat ja tulivat tarkemmiksi, kun kirjurin ja alioikeuksien tuli ottaa huomioon hovioikeuden koulutetun eliitin tarpeet, vaatimukset ja odotukset. Myös osa alioikeuksista seurasi hovioikeuden esimerkkiä langettamalla itsemurhaajille lain kirjaimesta poikkeavia rangaistusmuotoja sekä hyväksymällä erilaisia, ns. täydeksi hulluudeksi kelpaamattomia mielisairauden tiloja lieventäviksi tekijöiksi erityisesti vuosisadan lopulla. Voidaan katsoa, että tällainen toiminta liittyi erityisesti tuomarien ”ammattilaistumiseen” eli lisääntyneeseen koulutukseen ja harjoitteluun hovioikeuksissa. Silti paikallisten oikeusistuinten toiminta ei vuosisadan lopullakaan osoita selkeitä merkkejä siitä, että alioikeudet olisivat muuttuneet keskus- ja esivallan ja valtion kontrolloimiksi ja niiden intressejä palveleviksi areenoiksi. Konteksti ja tilanteet sekä ihmisten sosiaaliset asemat ja suhteet olivat keskiössä ’paikallisten totuuksien’ määrittelyssä ja itsemurhien oikeudellisessa käsittelyssä.

Erityisesti syytetyn vainajan sosiaalisella asemalla, erityisesti maineella ja suhteilla mutta myös sukupuolella ja iällä, oli vaikutusta alioikeuden tulkintoihin ja tuomioihin. Tuomarin kanssa tuomiovaltaa käyttävät paikalliset talonpojat ja porvarit saattoivat antaa esimerkiksi henkilökohtaisen käsityksensä tai suhteensa vainajaan tai tämän omaisiin vaikuttaa tulkintoihinsa. Tutkimus paljastaakin myös itsemurhaan liittyvien käsitysten ja asenteiden monimuotoisuuden 1600-luvun Ruotsissa ja Suomessa. Kaikkia, tai kaikkien, itsemurhia ei pidetty tai esitetty yhtä tuomittavina; itsemurhan tehneen persoona ja maine vaikuttivat siihen, miten tekoon suhtauduttiin ja miten se ymmärrettiin ja selitettiin. Erityisesti mieleltään sairaiksi katsottujen ja alaikäisten tekemiä itsemurhia pidettiin huomattavasti vähemmän tuomittavina kuin mieleltään terveiksi katsottujen aikuisten itsemurhia. Myös kunnioitettujen, uskonnollisten ja pidettyjen yhteisön jäsenten itsemurhia ei pidetty yhtä tuomittavina ja vakavina rikoksina kuin pahamaineisten henkilöiden itsemurhia, vaikka itse teot olisivat olleet piirteiltään samanlaiset. Heikoimmassa asemassa olivat ”huonoa” elämää viettäneet, ei-pidetyt ja vieraspaikkakuntalaiset, joilla ei ollut omaisia puhumassa puolestaan.

Itsemurhien oikeudellisen käsittelyn tutkiminen osoittaa, että rikosten ja oikeusprosessien sekä rikosasteiden tutkimuksessa tulee ottaa huomioon lainsäädännön ja oikeustapausten ohella erilaisia kulttuurisia, sosiaalisia ja hallinnollisia tekijöitä. Tutkimus tuottaa uutta tietoa alioikeuksien toiminnoista ja käytännöistä rikosten käsittelyssä. Ruohonjuuritasolle keskittyminen osoittaa, että oikeudenkäyttö paikallisissa alioikeuksissa oli paitsi kontekstisidonnaista myös paikallisväestön toiminnasta ja intresseistä riippuvaista.

The present study is an analysis of the judicial treatment of suicides in the lower courts of the Swedish Realm during the seventeenth century. The focus is on the investigation of suicides in the lowest levels of the secular judicial system, the rural and urban lower courts. The legislation and the legal praxis involving crimes of suicides, including indictment or prosecution, investigation and interpretation, and sentencing of suicides in the lower courts are examined. The crimes and lower court proceedings for suicides are examined in different central and peripheral areas of Central Sweden, Finland and Karelia. The research period is roughly between 1630 and 1700, generally known as the period when Sweden was a Great Power and an era of centralization, bureaucratization and professionalization of judicature. However, due to the case material, the focus is on the latter half of the century. The judicial treatment of suicides is also employed to examine scholarly interpretations of the general development of legal practice in the Swedish Realm of the era. The practices related to dealing with this relatively exceptional crime serve as empirical evidence for the analysis of lower court functions and legal culture in different parts of the vast Swedish Realm during the century of the so-called judicial revolution. Thus, the research objective is to study not only the legal treatment and investigation of suicides but also the wider administrative and judicial change or transition from ‘traditional’ local justice to a state-controlled expert judicature that has been interpreted as characterizing the early modern era. This research provides the first comprehensive study of the judicial treatment of suicides and the attitudes towards and views on suicide in 17th-century Sweden (including Finland).

The research utilizes a combination of seventeenth-century judicial documents concerning suicide cases investigated especially in the rural lower courts of Central Sweden, Southwestern Finland, Northern Ostrobothnia, Karelia and Kexholm. The case material (the main sample) consists of 165 crimes of suicide collected especially from the engrossed lower court records and Svea Court of Appeal sentence letters. Also, legislation and early modern Swedish literature, such as juridical guidebooks and theological works, law drafts, ecclesiastical documents, ordinances and precedents have also been deployed. The research material is analysed especially by comparative method and contextualization. The research focuses on crimes of suicide rather than on suicide as a phenomenon. Suicide is approached as a culture-specific, socially constructed category in the sense that the allocation of a death to this category was not entirely consistent and was rather a product of situational negotiation. ‘Suicides’ are the deaths which the contemporaries classified as the crime and the type of punishable death understood as suicide in seventeenth-century Sweden; the categorization did not entirely correspond with the modern concept of suicide. Like the construction of ‘suicide’, also the lower court trials and the later written descriptions of them are approached as social constructions and products of interaction and negotiations between multiple actors.

The first law that criminalized suicide in the Swedish realm was the King Christopher’s Law, promulgated in 1442, and more widely in use since its printing in 1608. Suicide was considered a felony that required a jury investigation in the lower court. The penalties for suicide were inflicted on the corpse of the sentenced: the sane were to be taken care of by the executioner who would take their remains in the woods and burn them there while those considered to have been insane were to be buried somewhere outside the churchyard. Unlike many other European realms and states, the Swedish law did not follow the Roman legal tradition; thus, the property of the felon suicides was not confiscated and the insane suicides were not exempt from punishment. The legislation on suicide was supplemented during the 17th century. Most importantly, all suicide cases were, like other felonies, to be sent to the Courts of Appeal for review. The Courts of Appeal started to revise and diversify the forms of penalties passed for suicide. Also, the Courts of Appeal transformed the prerequisites for the sentence of an insane suicide. However, the lower courts were in principle supposed to follow the old, and outdated medieval law, regardless of the changed views on appropriate forms of punishment and ‘insanity’ that could allow a mitigated penalty.

Views of and attitudes towards suicide must be taken into consideration in order to understand the investigation, interpretation and treatment of suicides in the lower courts. The views on suicide that existed in 17th-century Sweden were not created in a vacuum. The criminalization and later reforms in juridical thinking and at the Court of Appeal level can be understood by taking into account the wider historical and international context. The condemnation of the act of suicide had deep roots in the European past. Burial prohibitions and sanctions of some sort had already been in use already in the Antiquity but it was not until the Christian church adopted the view on the sinfulness and punishability of suicide that the act became more generally condemned and sanctioned. Arguments against self-killing were formulated early on, and the same arguments continued in use for centuries. Most European realms criminalized suicide by the late Middle Ages in a setting where Church views and stipulations on suicides were strict and ideas on the authority, power and rights of sovereigns had changed. No doubt, the foreign examples and models and current political needs of the authorities played a part in the criminalization of self-killing in the Swedish realm in 1442. Although the authorities unequivocally condemned the act of suicide in their writings as a grave sin of murder and manifestation of despair and as a heinous crime that should be punished especially in order to appease God’s wrath, there existed notions on different degrees of culpability of the suicide. The insane were exempt from criminal penalties in many areas of Europe. The 17th-century Swedish jurisprudents also considered that the criminal liability of the insane was diminished but still inflicted mitigated forms of penalties for insane suicides. The Swedish Church, whose jurisdiction over suicides overlapped with the secular jurisdiction until the 1680s, also treated suicides by those considered insane differently. Taking into consideration the fact that the Courts of Appeal and ecclesiastical authorities used a wide range of penalties, depending on the case, there existed a notion that suicides were, in fact, different and that the act was not in every case considered as heinous as the scholarly literature of the era promulgated.

The judicial process started when a suspicious death was reported to a secular official and the case was indicted. A great deal of conditions had to have been fulfilled for a suicide to be reported and prosecuted in a secular court of law. Recorded reactions upon the discovery of a suicide vary, indicating that attitudes towards suicide were not uniform. The encounters were typically characterized by fear, avoidance and even abhorrence as the corpse of the suicide was considered dangerous. Still, depending on the circumstances and especially the interest of the bereaved, some suicides were considered pitiful tragedies and some corpses were not shunned, but even buried privately without the involvement of officials. Ultimately, the secular indictment depended on the local populace as the officials relied on denunciations of suspicious deaths by the bereaved and the community. The risk factors that interrupted the flow of information and prevented a suicide case from being indicted materialized in the peripheral research areas more likely than in the central regions. Their larger areas of responsibility and districts of civil servants, office-holders and clergymen meant longer distances and weaker opportunities for formal social control. Still, in practice, informal social control exercised within the local communities was ultimately of central importance in discovering and reporting crimes. At all turns, the successful indictment of a case required collaboration and cooperation with the local communities.

The latter half, and especially the last two decades of the century are characterized by a proliferation of suicide cases. Still, although there are some social changes and crises that appear to correlate with this increase of crimes of suicides, there is no clear evidence that suicidality, or the suicide rate, itself grew. Instead, the apparent change in the crime rate, with the number of suicide cases proliferating since the 1680s, can be understood when taking into account the better source survival, the nature of the material and the card-indexes used in compiling the samples of this study (and many other studies that suggest the growth) and the various changes that took place in late seventeenth-century Sweden and had an impact on the secular prosecution of suicides. A combination of factors, including jurisdictional, administrative, cultural and societal changes, impacted the trends in the indictment of suicides in the Swedish Empire. A disconnection between the letter and the enforcement of the law before the 1680s in part explains the scarcity of suicide cases in the earlier decades. Though the more systematically preserved sources and population growth offer valid explanations for the proliferation of suicide cases and the increased indictment of suspected suicides in the last decades of the century, it was more significant that the Church stepped aside as the primary authority dealing with suicides by the 1680s, which had a major effect on the possibilities for the secular officials and courts to enforce the law. When the state won the battle on jurisdiction over several types of criminal acts by the latter half of the century, the numbers and rates of these crimes grew. A critical approach on crime rates with a focus on the practicalities in the indictment and the limits of the state and its officials shows that crime rates rather reflect the possibilities and exercise of secular judicial powers and administration, or formal social control, and of people’s reporting behaviour and informal social control than the frequency of the act itself. In practice the indictment of suicides continued to depend on the so-called common people’s motivation to report their suspicions.

The lower court investigations of suspected suicides were complex tasks. The lower courts, with up to 12 local peasants or burghers making the decisions on guilt and other classifications, had to balance between the letter of the law that they were ordained to follow and the discretion that was in practice required to interpret the law and to mediate the needs and demands of the bereaved and other locals as well as the Court of Appeal jurists reviewing the cases. The lower courts had to consider the cause of death, involvement of others in the death and the intentions of the suspect suicide in order to determine whether the death had been a crime of suicide. Moreover, if the case was classified having been a suicide, the lower court had to determine the mental state of the accused post-mortem. All these were very open to interpretations, and primarily established based on hearing the bereaved and other local witnesses, i.e. laypeople on the corpses and cause of death, possible intentionality or foul play and past behaviour, mental state and personality of the accused.

The study has shown the discrepancy between the law and legal praxis in the treatment of suicides in 17th-century Sweden. It was difficult to follow the letter of the law in practice. First of all, the law was very vague on questions of intentionality when it came to suicides. Literally, any self-inflicted death by whatever means was a crime of suicide. Still, in practice the lower courts made distinctions between acts that were wilful or premeditated and acts that were accidental, considering that a self-inflicted death by a sane person was not ‘suicide’ if the objective of the person had not been to die. Also, insanity of the accused was open to interpretations. According to the law, even an accidental death by an insane person, i.e. a person unable to fend off accidents or danger, was a suicide. Thus, many types of accidental deaths, such as drownings of the feverish and delirious, could be crimes of suicide. On the other hand, the person was to be fully insane in the sense that it was to be widely known that he or she was incapable of avoiding accidents; by law, people less insane were not eligible for the more lenient form of penalty of burial outside the churchyard. The lower courts were left with the difficult task of treading a fine line between following the letter of the medieval law, as they were ordered to, and applying discretion in determining which deaths were crimes of suicides and which were not and which persons who had committed suicide had been of sound mind and which could be considered having been insane.

The classifications of deaths as ‘suicides’, as accidents or as obscure and acquitted cases (mörk sak) and the classifications of the mental state of the accused varied for although there existed shared notions of aggravating and mitigating pieces of evidence there was no consistent and uniform practice in determining their evidential value and ‘weight’. A framework did exist on what constituted a ‘suicide’ and on the contents of ‘sanity’ and ‘insanity’, but as there were no clear and firm formal rules and juridical guidelines nor a coherent judicial custom shaped via experience in dealing with such cases, the lower courts relied on ad hoc classifications when it came to less evident suicides, or suspicious deaths that had taken place in obscure circumstances, and ambiguous forms of insanity. Although the law on suicide did not recognize other mental conditions than the insanity to the extent of being unable to avoid accidents or dangers, the lower courts did. The formal requirements of insanity set in the medieval law were loosely interpreted and flexibly met, and the cases of those who were considered temporary or partly insane or suffering from melancholia or other less conspicuous and more obscure forms of insanity and who thus did not meet the strict official requirements for an insanity classification were treated on an ad hoc basis. The local opinions and categorizations were typically accepted by the lower courts. Throughout the century, majority of the sentenced suicides were classified as having been sane. Nevertheless, the categories of insanity defence expanded by the end of the century, and people suffering from melancholia and other vaguely manifesting and defined mental derangements were more often sentenced as insane suicides. In particular, due to changed views on ‘legal’ insanity and the professionalization of the lower courts, melancholia became more often accepted as a form of insanity that mitigated the criminal liability of suicide and allowed the penalty reserved for insane suicides. Also, some of the lower courts departed from the letter of the law in the forms of punishment, applying local practices and Court of Appeal examples in passing the penalties.

The lower court judicature was characterized by case by case classifications and local interpretation of the ‘truth’ throughout the century. The lower courts interpreted and classified the occasional suicide cases they encountered case by case rarely following at least any centrally defined premises. The classifications and interpretations in the suicide trials were rather the results of the local negotiations than influenced by the state representatives and legal or central authorities. The local communities had the greatest significance and were given a great deal of trust in the suicide trials. The judicature and state officials pivoted on the participation and cooperation of the bereaved and other locals at all stages of the investigation. The empirical examination of the indictment, investigation, interpretation, classification and sentencing of suicides has revealed the key role of the local communities and families. In the absence of large machineries of officials, supervision or police force, and thus the limited though regionally varying possibilities for formal social control, the judicature and its functions depended on local communities. The study has shown that there are some signs of the ‘judicial revolution’ in the treatment of suicide cases in the lower courts. Especially the Courts of Appeal and the professionalization of those acting as judges influenced the forms of penalties passed and the classification of sanity and insanity. Nevertheless, there are no clear signs that the courts were turning into arenas increasingly controlled by the authorities and serving the interests of the state rather than the local community.

There are clear indications that the individuality, context or situations and social status and relations of people were significant in establishing the ‘local truths’ and in the judicial treatment of suicides. This also manifests that the shift towards a more formal, ‘objective’ or context-independent use of law in the exercise of justice and top-down control was far from complete even in the late 17th-century Sweden. The social status of the accused influenced the categorization of his or her death as well as the interpretations and classifications made of his or her mental state and the causes and contexts of the suicide. Although some of the individual positions or characteristics of the accused, such as gender, estate and having local social ties, influenced the interpretations, it was rather the combination of one’s socio-economic positions and especially his or her reputation, character and behaviour that determined one’s social status, i.e. his or her relative rank in the social hierarchy. The image of the person and the quality of his or her social ties were significant in the suicide trials and influenced the treatment of the case. The suicides by those who had been particularly well-reputed, valued and liked in their communities (high social status) were treated more leniently – insanity pleas and classifications as well as the more lenient forms of penalties and even acquittals were more common in their cases compared to the cases of those who had led ‘bad’ lives and had been ill-reputed and disliked in their communities. A good character testimony could go a long way. There existed strong imagery, or stereotypes and archetypes, of what kind of people committed suicides and what kind of people did not, and in what kinds of circumstances people committed suicides and in what kinds of conditions not. It was far more difficult to conceive that a devout Christian could have, at least in his or her right mind, commit such a sin. In the case of those who had led esteemed lives and had favourable social ties it was typical that mitigating circumstantial evidence was sought and presented and aggravating overlooked. In turn, the suicides of the ill-reputed were treated and punished more harshly.

The study has shown that attitudes and views on suicide were diverse in 17th-century Sweden. There existed various degrees of criminal and moral culpability. The past life and reputation of the suicide influenced how the act was reacted to, understood and explained. Most importantly, suicide committed by an insane person or a minor was considered significantly less reprehensible even by the legal and religious authorities than a suicide committed by a mentally sane adult; they were considered less responsible for their actions due to their perceived diminished mental capacities and thus permitted mitigated forms of penalty for their criminal act. Also, the seemingly similar suicides by esteemed community members were not considered as heinous and condemnable as those committed by notorious individuals. The witnesses and members of the lower court could feel compassion for well-reputed and -connected and their bereaved, and commiserate their backgrounds and connect them with the suicidal urges. Those in physical pains, insane or in fever and unable to fend for themselves and those who were thought to have been victims of misfortunes were often portrayed as poor creatures who had tragically descended into suicide. The suicides by the ill-reputed were portrayed as reactions to one’s own sins and wrongdoings and consequences of one’s ungodly personality and behaviour. Local opinions, interests and needs had a significant impact in the suicide trials, setting the tone for the interpretation and influencing the classifications and sentences reached by the lower courts.

The research on the judicial treatment of suicides has shown that a multitude of cultural, social, legal and administrative factors need to be taken into consideration in the research of crimes and criminal trials, as well as their outcomes and thus crime rates. The study has provided new information about the lower court functions and practical operations in crime investigations. Focus on the grass roots level has shown that the judicature at the local, lower court level was not only context-dependent but also dependent on the activities and interests of the local populace.