Interesting gendered jury history in the application of the death penalty

Via the Smithsonian Magazine, I came across this fascinating piece about juries and capital punishment history headlined “How All-Female ‘Juries of Matrons’ Shaped Legal History.”  I recommend the piece in full, and here are some excerpts:

For more than 700 years, women in England could avoid the death penalty just by virtue of being pregnant.  A pregnant woman sentenced to death would receive a stay of execution until the baby was born. This tactic was called “pleading the belly” and often resulted in the death sentence being reduced to a less severe penalty once the pregnancy was over.

Of course, anyone can say they’re pregnant without actually being with child. So how did courts determine whether the claim was true? Until the early 20th century, it was standard practice to assemble all-female juries, called “juries of matrons,” to determine whether a woman was pregnant and could therefore avoid hanging for capital offenses….

All-female juries existed as early as 1140 in England and persisted until 1931. Their role in the courts was highly regarded. They were medical experts. If they found the woman was “quick with child” (pregnant), their findings were not disputed….

All-female juries also existed in colonial America, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. In fact, the first use of the English jury system in Australia was a jury of matrons….

If a convicted woman’s pregnancy resulted in a birth, a reprieve from the noose was fairly common. This raised the concern among men that women might falsely plead the belly to avoid punishment for a capital offense. They worried a jury of matrons, being “naturally” sympathetic to women, might grant the guilty a reprieve from death.

While there is scant evidence that this was the case, to address the men’s concern, the laws around pleading the belly stipulated that such a plea could only be made once. If a pregnant woman was granted a reprieve from death to have the baby, she could be executed for any future crime—even if pregnant at the time.