Strafverzachting door Hof van Assisen van West-Vlaanderen in de Hollandse periode (1814-1830)

Abstract

Abstract This contribution deals with the softening of sentences by the Assize Court of West Flanders in the Dutch period (1814-1830). It is successively examined how the judges in this Court made use of a number of provisions in the Code pénal of 1810 to pursue their own sentencing policy, secondly, how the same judges, by re-qualifying the facts that the public prosecutor had brought to them defendant, succeeded in imposing a lesser sentence than that claimed by the prosecutor, third, how those same judges made use of the decisions of September 9, 1814 and January 20, 1815, invoking extenuating circumstances, to impose a lesser penalty than that determined in the Code pénal of 1810 and finally how King William I converted some death sentences into lesser punishments with his right of grace.