A mirror punishment is a penal form of poetic justice which reflects the nature or means of the crime in the means of (often physical) punishment as a form of retributive justice—the practice of "repaying" a wrongdoer "in kind". It can be an application of the lex talionis (“an eye for an eye”), but is not always proportional justice, as a similar method may be used to produce a worse or milder effect than the crime it "retaliates". The simplest method of mirror punishment is to enact the same action upon the criminal as the criminal perpetrated upon the victim. For example, thieves have the same amount of money taken from them as they stole, one who strikes another is struck in the same way, one who willfully causes another person's death is killed, and so on.
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Notably in various jurisdictions of colonial British North America, even relatively minor crimes, such as hog stealing, were punishable by having one's ears nailed to the pillory and slit loose, or even cropped, a counterfeiter would be branded on top (for that crime, considered lèse- majesté, the older mirror punishment was boiling in oil), which was an example of western mutilation.Garraty, John A. (2003) Historical Viewpoints. New York City, New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Independence did not render American justice any less brutal.
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W. S. Gilbert's comic opera The Mikado contains a song satirizing mirror punishment: :The billiard-sharp who anyone catches :His doom’s extremely hard— :He’s made to dwell :In a dungeon cell :On a spot that’s always barred. :And there he plays extravagant matches :In fitless finger-stalls, :On a cloth untrue :With a twisted cue :And elliptical billiard balls. The refrain line "to let the punishment fit the crime" has sometimes been quoted in the course of British political debates, though the concept predates Gilbert.Green, Edward.
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The term lex talionis does not always and only refer to literal eye-for-an-eye codes of justice (see rather mirror punishment) but applies to the broader class of legal systems that specify formulate penalties for specific crimes, which are thought to be fitting in their severity. Some propose that this was at least in part intended to prevent excessive punishment at the hands of either an avenging private party or the state. The most common expression of lex talionis is "an eye for an eye", but other interpretations have been given as well. Legal codes following the principle of lex talionis have one thing in common: prescribed 'fitting' counter punishment for a felony.
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Execution wheel (German: Richtrad) with underlays, 18th century; on display at the Märkisches Museum, Berlin The breaking wheel or execution wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the Wheel, was a torture method used for public execution primarily in Europe from antiquity through Middle Ages into the early modern period by breaking the bones of a criminal, and/or bludgeoning them to death. The practice was abolished in Bavaria in 1813 and in the Electorate of Hesse in 1836: the last known execution by the "Wheel" took place in Prussia in 1841. In the Holy Roman Empire it was a "mirror punishment" for highwaymen and street thieves, and was set out in the Sachsenspiegel for murder, and arson that resulted in fatalities.
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Often, however, a more esoteric method of mirror punishment is used, which implies punishing the part of the criminal's body used to commit the crime. Extreme examples include the amputation of the hands of a thief, as still permitted by Sharia law, or during the Middle Ages in Europe, or disabling the foot or leg of a runaway slave. thumb When the Halifax Gibbet was used as a method of execution, if the offender was to be executed for stealing an animal, a cord was fastened to the pin and tied to either the stolen animal or one of the same species, which was then driven off, withdrawing the pin and allowing the blade to drop. Other examples include the punishment of adulterous women by the insertion of irritating substances into their vaginas (in the past hot pokers were sometimes used).
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