Vehmic court

The Vehmic courts, also called Vehmgericht, holy vehme, or simply Vehm, were a tribunal system of Westphalia in Germany active during the Late Middle Ages, based on a fraternal organization of lay judges known as free judges. Their original seat was Dortmund, and proceedings were sometimes secret, giving rise to alternative names such as secret courts, silent courts, or forbidden courts; after a death sentence was carried out, the corpse could be hanged on a tree to advertise the fact and deter others. The courts peaked in activity during the 14th and 15th centuries, with lesser activity in the 13th and 16th centuries and scattered evidence of survival into the 17th and 18th, before being abolished by order of Jerome Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, in 1811. They were the regional courts of Westphalia, based in turn on the county courts of Franconia, and received their jurisdiction, including the capacity to pronounce capital punishment, directly from the Holy Roman Emperor at a time when that power had elsewhere been usurped by territorial nobles. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/