Drew Nelles recounts the history of animals being tried in criminal courts. Of note is the amazing story of "Murderous Mary" the circus elephant, who killed an inexperienced trainer in a gruesome manner before bystanders in 1916. The Tennessee townspeople demanded revenge:
A cable and chain, dangling from a 100-ton Clinchfield Railyard crane boom, was slipped over Mary’s neck. The operator threw the motor into motion, and the derrick reeled in the chain, squeezing the elephant’s throat and lifting her from the ground. Mary twisted in agony; there was a sudden snap, and she crashed back to the earth, all 10,000 pounds of her, sitting there stunned and reeling with a broken hip. Some of the crowd scattered. But the job had to be finished. Mary’s executioners attached a heavier chain and tried again. This time it worked, and Mary finally died like the captive she was, with metal around her neck and a crowd looking on in awe and horror.
This wasn’t an execution; it was a lynching.
There was no trial to speak of. But the death of Murderous Mary has its place in the history of animal trials because it reflected the values of its age. In the Southern US, this was the era of lynching. In Tennessee alone, an estimated 204 black people were lynched between 1882 and 1968, according to the Tuskegee Institute—a number that rises to 3,446 nationwide. It was a time and a place in which this particularly cruel form of justice was meted out with no regard for due process or fair hearings. Medieval Europeans thought animals deserved trials; to the Tennesseans of 1916, on the other hand, an elephant lynching was just like any other. Animals didn’t deserve trials before their executions, but then again, neither did men.
The Dish 