"Hanging judge" is a colloquial phrase for a

judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

who has gained notoriety for handing down punishment by sentencing convicted persons to death by

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

, or otherwise imposing unusually harsh sentences. Hanging judges are officers of the court with mandates, as opposed to extralegal lynch law.

Historical examples

17th century

* George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys * Salathiel Lovell * John Toler, 1st Earl of Norbury

19th century

Matthew Baillie Begbie Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie (9 May 1819 – 11 June 1894) was a British lawyer, politician, and judge. In 1858, Begbie became the first Chief Justice of the Crown Colony of British Columbia in colonial times and in the first decades after Br ...

, Vancouver and Victoria judge * Isaac C. Parker, U.S. district judge

20th century

Nikolai Krylenko Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko (, ; 2 May 1885 – 29 July 1938) was an Old Bolshevik and Soviet politician, military commander, and jurist. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet law, Soviet legal system, rising to become Minis ...

, Bolshevik revolutionary, prosecutor, and Minister of Justice of the USSR * Roland Freisler, president (presiding judge) of the Nazi ''Volksgerichtshof'' (d. 3 February 1945) * Vasiliy Ulrikh, Soviet jurist, chief presiding judge at the Moscow Show Trials during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

* Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice of England * , Polish judge at communist political trials, including that of

Witold Pilecki Witold Pilecki (; 13 May 190125 May 1948), known by the codenames ''Roman Jezierski'', ''Tomasz Serafiński'', ''Druh'' and ''Witold'', was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. As a youth, Pilecki ...

and the Warsaw meat affair. His harsh rulings gave rise to the saying "Kryże is judging – there will be crosses" ( Polish: ''sądzi Kryże – będą krzyże''). *

Sadegh Khalkhali Mohammed Sadeq Givi Khalkhali (; 27 July 1926 – 26 November 2003) was an Iranian Shia cleric who is said to have "brought to his job as Chief Justice of the revolutionary courts a relish for summary execution" that earned him a reputation ...

, Shia cleric of the Islamic Republic of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

* Choor Singh, judge of the Supreme Court of

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

Ebrahim Raisi Ebrahim Raisolsadati (14 December 1960 – 19 May 2024), better known as Ebrahim Raisi, was an Iranian politician who served as the eighth president of Iran from 2021 until 2024 Varzaqan helicopter crash, his death in a helicopter crash in 202 ...

, eighth president of Iran, in his earlier role in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners

Cultural references

* A character in the

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

song " Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" (album: '' Blood on the Tracks'') * Justice Wargrave in

Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English people, English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving ...

's novel ''

And Then There Were None ''And Then There Were None'' is a mystery fiction, mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, who described it as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 N ...

'' * '' The Hanging Judge'', a 1918 film directed by Henry Edwards * A track on the 1991 Armored Saint album '' Symbol of Salvation'' * Justice Sir Francis Brittain in Bruce Hamilton's 1949 novel ''Hanging Judge''; the novel was adapted for the stage by

Raymond Massey Raymond Hart Massey (August 30, 1896 – July 29, 1983) was a Canadian actor known for his commanding stage-trained voice. For his lead role in '' Abe Lincoln in Illinois'' (1940), Massey was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He r ...

in 1952, and

Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), known professionally as Boris Karloff () and occasionally billed as Karloff the Uncanny, was a British actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film ''Frankenstei ...

played Justice Brittain in the BBC Radio adaptation of the play in 1953. * Critic

Stanley Crouch Stanley Lawrence Crouch (December 14, 1945 – September 16, 2020) was an American cultural critic, poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, and syndicated columnist. He was known for his jazz criticism and his 2000 novel ''Don't the Moon Lo ...

's 1990 essay collection entitled ''Notes of a Hanging Judge''

References

Capital punishment Informal legal terminology {{law-term-stub