To be pressed to death, known in Law French as peine forte et dure, meant being crushed under heavy weights by order of an English court until you either entered a plea or died. It was not a sentence for a crime. It was a procedural device used against defendants who refused to say “guilty” or “not guilty,” because common law could not run a felony trial without those words on the record. The practice ran for roughly four centuries, beginning with imprisonment and starvation after the Statute of Westminster in 1275 and taking on its familiar form of crushing under iron weights around 1406.1Britannica. Peine Forte et Dure – Torture, Punishment, Capital Crime
Why a Plea Was Required
Medieval English felony procedure depended on the accused speaking. The defendant had to formally consent to the court’s jurisdiction by stating a plea aloud. Without that, no jury could be sworn, no evidence heard, no verdict reached. A silent prisoner stopped the criminal process cold.
When a prisoner would not speak, the court empaneled a jury to decide why. A defendant found “mute by visitation of God,” meaning physically unable to speak through illness or disability, could still be tried. A defendant found “mute of malice,” meaning deliberately silent, faced peine forte et dure.2National Center for Biotechnology Information. Unfitness to Plead in England and Wales: Historical Development and Contemporary Dilemmas
What the Pressing Actually Involved
William Blackstone described the procedure in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. Once ordered, the prisoner was taken to a low, dark room, stripped, and laid on their back on the bare floor with their limbs extended. A board or iron frame was placed over the chest, and the executioner stacked iron weights on top of it, “as much as he could bear, and more.”3Yale Law School. Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4
The prisoner was starved at the same time. On the first day, three morsels of the worst bread. On the second day, three draughts of standing water drawn from the nearest source to the prison door. Bread and water alternated, never on the same day, while the weight kept increasing.3Yale Law School. Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4
The process ended one of two ways. The prisoner spoke a plea, or the prisoner died. Death came from suffocation, as the weight compressed the ribcage and kept the lungs from expanding.
Why Anyone Would Choose This
The strategic logic was property. Under English common law, a felony conviction triggered attainder, which “corrupted the blood” of the convicted person. Corruption of blood destroyed every inheritable quality. The convicted lost all land, all chattels, all rights of entry, and their heirs lost the ability to inherit through them. The forfeiture reached back to the moment of the offense, voiding any sale or transfer the defendant had made in the meantime.4University of Chicago Press. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution
Refusing to plead broke the chain. No plea, no trial. No trial, no conviction. No conviction, no attainder. A defendant who died under the weights died legally unconvicted, and the estate passed to the heirs instead of to the Crown. For someone who believed conviction was certain, enduring the press was an agonizing but rational way to protect the family.5ResearchGate. This Death Some Strong and Stout Hearted Man Doth Choose: The Practice of Peine Forte et Dure in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century England
The Giles Corey Case
The best-known American instance is Giles Corey, an elderly farmer accused of witchcraft at Salem in 1692. Corey had recently deeded his farm to his two sons-in-law. He saw where the trials were going, and a conviction would have let the colony seize the property. He refused to enter a plea.6Famous Trials. Giles Corey
On September 19, 1692, Corey was stripped, laid in a field near the Salem jail, and had stones piled on his chest. He died within hours. Tradition holds that his last words were a demand for “more weight,” though historians have noted that detail may be apocryphal rather than drawn from contemporary records.6Famous Trials. Giles Corey Either way, the choice worked. His property passed to his family rather than to the government.
How the Practice Ended
Parliament killed the strategy before it killed the procedure. The Felony and Piracy Act of 1772 (12 Geo. 3 c. 20) declared that any prisoner who stood mute or refused to answer directly would be convicted of the felony as if confessed, with all the same consequences, forfeiture included. Silence no longer protected an estate. It just guaranteed conviction without a trial.
That law was harsh and one-sided. The Criminal Law Act 1827 (7 & 8 Geo. 4 c. 28) replaced it with the approach still used today: when a defendant stands mute of malice or refuses to answer, the court enters a plea of “not guilty” on their behalf, and a full trial follows with the prosecution carrying its usual burden.7vLex United Kingdom. Criminal Law Act 1827
What Happens to a Silent Defendant Today
Every legal system descended from English common law now uses the 1827 solution. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(a)(4) says it directly: “If a defendant refuses to enter a plea … the court must enter a plea of not guilty.”8Legal Information Institute. Rule 11 – Pleas, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure There is no punishment for silence, no adverse inference, and no delay. The presumption of innocence stays intact and the case moves forward.
When silence looks like it stems from mental illness or disability rather than defiance, the court orders a competency evaluation and suspends the criminal case until the question is resolved. That inquiry is the descendant of the old “mute by visitation of God” determination, though the modern standards developed on their own.9Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Mute by Visitation of God, Competency to Stand Trial and Fitness to Plead
The property threat that drove the whole calculation was also written out of American law at the start. Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution bars Congress from passing any bill of attainder, and the same prohibition applies to the states.10Constitution Annotated. Article I Section 9 Clause 3 Article III adds that even a conviction for treason cannot work corruption of blood or forfeiture beyond the life of the person convicted. The reason someone would once have chosen the weights over a plea does not exist in the American system.