Blood Law
Template:Short description Blood Law, in some traditional Native American communities, was the severe, usually capital punishment of certain serious crimes. The responsibility for delivering this justice has traditionally fallen to the family or clan of the victim, usually a male relative.
Description
Currently in the United States, only state and federal governments or military courts can impose the death penalty. Justice under Blood Law would be considered revenge killing or summary murder, and also could be an additional aggravating circumstance requiring the death penalty for the crime.Template:CN
Historically, a "cursory survey of the ethnohistorical literature indicates that death was the standardTemplate:Clarify timeframe punishment [for witchcraft] among Native American societies,"<ref name=Kilpatrick4-6/> including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Delaware, Hopi, Miami, Natchez, Navajo and Seneca.<ref name=Kilpatrick4-6>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=GeertzHopi>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In 1824 the western Cherokee passed new laws "forbidding the wanton killing of suspected witches".<ref name=Kilpatrick5>Template:Cite book</ref> However, traditional views concerning personal or family-enforced retribution for serious crimes appear to have continued in both the Cherokee and Creek communities throughout the 19th Century,<ref name=Kilpatrick5/> and in some communities through into the present day.<ref name=Kilpatrick4-6/><ref name=GeertzHopi/>