Deodand

In reading a case for a paper I am researching, I came across a footnote that mentioned the historic law of "deodand."  Under this doctrine, a chattel involved in the accidental death of a person would be forfeited to the Crown.  Jacob Finkelstein, in his article, The Goring Ox: Some Historical Perspectives on Deodands, Forfeitures, Wrongful Death, and the Western Notion of Sovereignty (46 Temple L. Quart. 169, 1972) describes the history of this practice:

The institution of deodands is almost certainly the result of the confluence and merger of two traditions, the biblical and pre-Christian ones. As to the latter, we have little direct evidence of Anglo-Saxon practice that can with any confidence be thought to be uncontaminated by the biblical tradition and its moral categories. The Laws of Alfred the Great were prefaced by a translation of chapters 21-22 of the Book of Exodus, and Christian-i.e., biblical-moral notions permeate much of the statement of the laws proper, even if the substance of the rules themselves may be thought to be largely pre-Christian in origin." It may nevertheless be conceded that the rule in Alfred, Ch. 13, which provides that the kin of the victim are to take the tree (within 30 days after the accident) which fell upon and killed their kinsman as the result of a mishap by a fellow workman, is a fair reflection of an early and widespread usage designated as the "noxal surrender". The noxal surrender was the means by which the agent or instrument causing damage or death without any malicious intent on the part of the owner is surrendered to the victim or his kin, not as a true restitution for the damage done, but as a ransom by the owner of the wrong-doing chattel in order to forestall further action by the injured party. Only a refusal to surrender the "wrongdoing" agent (which could have been a person's slave, beast, or inanimate chattel) might expose the owner to suit for full composition.

Unfortunately, I could not find an accessible link to the full article, though Paul Schiff Berman's article, An Anthropological Approach to Modern Forfeiture Law: The Symbolic Function of Legal Actions Against Objects, can provide a similar background as well as an interesting discussion of how modern forfeiture law originates in this ancient practice.  The United States Supreme Court also drew this connection in J. W. Goldsmith Jr., Grant Co. v. United States, 254 U.S. 505 (1922), when the Court noted the origins of government forfeiture power in the historical practice of deodand.  The Court cited Blackstone, who noted that this practice extended back to the times of Ancient Greece.

Deodand was abolished in England in 1846 and it is not practiced in the United States (unless one counts forfeiture as its continuation).

Several states' constitutions explicitly prohibit deodand or equivalent practices, most often in the context of property left behind by one who commits suicide.  These states are Missouri (Art. 1, §30) , New Hampshire (Pt. 2, Art. 89), Tennessee (Art. 1, §12), and Vermont (Ch. II, §65).