Culprit

A culprit, under English law properly the prisoner at the bar, is a person accused of a crime, although the term is used more generally of one guilty of an offence. The word combines two Anglo-French legal words, culpable, meaning guilty, and prit or prest, from Old French meaning ready. When a prisoner at the bar pleaded not guilty, the clerk of the crown answered culpable and stated that the Crown was ready to join issue, and the words cul. prist were then entered on the roll to show that issue had been joined. When French law terms were discontinued, the words came to be taken as a single word addressed to the prisoner. The formula Culprit, how will you be tried, given in answer to a plea of not guilty, is first found in the 1678 trial for murder of the seventh Earl of Pembroke. Under current criminal law the preferred term is defendant.