9. The Accused Was Given the Choice of Trial By Combat
One of the most critical aspects of the legal practice of trial by combat was that it gave the accused a means of protesting guilt. In many Germanic legal systems, an accused, no matter their social status, was afforded the right to request a trial by combat to attempt to prove their innocence. The era believed that this was a progressive and just way of handling legal proceedings, as many previous systems gave the accused no legal recourse against their accusers.
Accused men chose trial by combat for any number of reasons. Insufficient evidence to exonerate the accused was a frequent reason, as well as an injured sense of honor of being accused at all. Civil matters were notoriously slow to solve in the era, with deliberations sometimes taking years. When a valuable property was involved, some medieval men chose to request a trial by combat to at least hasten the decision, even at the risk of it not ending up in their favor. Of course, one can imagine that strong and martially skilled men may have taken advantage of trial by combat to avoid punishment for crimes, but remember the fact that weaker men were allowed to hire a professional champion to fight on their behalf.
