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In 1829, the court at Lund University sentenced a man to death, for murdering a fellow student. He was publicly executed in Lund the following year. This deserves a thread:
(For Swedish-speakers, the case is described in detail in the podcast @OppetFall feat. @FTersmeden)
(For Swedish-speakers, the case is described in detail in the podcast @OppetFall feat. @FTersmeden)
The case itself was pretty straightforward. The perpetrator, Jacob Wilhelm Blomdahl, beat the victim, Andreas Emanuel Landén, to death. This occurred either during a brawl, according to one version, or while the victim was asleep, according to another.
The motive was either money or jealousy. Again, there are different versions. After the death of Landén, the perpetrator Blomdahl hid the body in a closet. Later, he moved the body to a privy and went to eat dinner.
Finally, Blomdahl decided to try to drag the body away and hide it outside the city. Shortly thereafter, he gave up and simply dropped the body, having stripped it to make identification more difficult.
Landén was nevertheless quickly identified, and traces of blood could be followed to Blomdahl's residence, where more blood was found, along with some of Landéns possessions. Blomdahl was promptly arrested.
Now for the interesting part: during this time, the universities still enjoyed academic jurisdiction. This meant that the university was responsible for legal proceedings concerning students, employees of the university, and their families.
Thus, a group of professors convened in accordance with university protocol, to assess the case. Since it was a clear case of murder, the law was equally clear on the sentence: death. Consequently, the court condemned Blomdahl to death.
When the university court condemned someone to death, the verdict had to be confirmed by both the regular higher court and the supreme court. Both of these agreed with the university court. Thus, Blomdahl's fate was sealed and he was finally executed through decapitation.
After this, the concept of academic jurisdiction was gradually phased out, a few decades later it had been limited to disciplinary issues. The university prison was thus abolished. The last remnants of the academic jurisdiction disappeared in 1908.
That concludes this thread. If I made any mistakes, I hope @FTersmeden (who has encyclopedic knowledge of these things) will correct me.
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