in criminal law (from reprendre, "to take back"), is the withdrawing of a sentence for an interval of time; whereby the execution is suspended. See JUDGMENT.

This may be, first, ex arbitrio judicis, either before or after judgment; as, where the judge is not satisfied with the verdict, or the evidence is suspicious, or the indictment is insufficient, or he is doubtful whether the offence be within clergy; or sometimes if it be a small felony, or any favourable circumstances appear in the criminal's character, in order to give room to apply to the crown for either an absolute or conditional pardon. These arbitrary reprieves may be granted or taken off by the justices of gaol-delivery, although their session be finished, and their commission expired; but this rather by common usage than of strict right.

Reprieves may also be ex necessitate legis: as where a woman is capitally convicted, and pleads her pregnancy. Though this is no cause to stay judgment, yet it is to reprieve the execution till she be delivered. This is a mercy dictated by the law of nature, in favorem pro-avis; and therefore no part of the bloody proceedings in the reign of Queen Mary hath been more justly detested, than the cruelty that was exercised in the island of Guernsey, of burning a woman big with child; and, Reprieve, when through the violence of the flames the infant Repriek sprang forth at the stake, and was preserved by the bystanders, after some deliberations of the priests who assisted at the sacrifice, they cast it into the fire as a young heretic. A barbarity which they never learned from the laws of ancient Rome; which direct, with the same humanity as our own, quod praegnantis mulieris damnate pana differatur, quoad pariat: which doctrine has also prevailed in England, as early as the first memorials of our law will reach. In case this plea be made in stay of execution, the judge must direct a jury of twelve matrons or discreet women to inquire into the fact; and if they bring in their verdict quick with child (for barbary with child, unless it be alive in the womb, is not sufficient), execution shall be stayed generally till the next session; and so from session to session, till either she is delivered, or proves by the course of nature not to have been with child at all. But if she once hath had the benefit of this reprieve, and been delivered, and afterwards becomes pregnant again, she shall not be entitled to the benefit of a farther respite for that cause. For she may now be executed before the child is quick in the womb; and shall not, by her own incontinence, evade the sentence of justice.

Another cause of regular reprieve is, if the offender become non compos between the judgment and the award of execution: for regularly, though a man be compos when he commits a capital crime, yet if he becomes non compos after, he shall not be indicted; if after indictment, he shall not be convicted; if after conviction, he shall not receive judgment; if after judgment, he shall not be ordered for execution: for furvojus solo furvore punitur; and the law knows not but he might have offered some reason, if in his senses, to have stayed these respective proceedings. It is therefore an invariable rule, when any time intervenes between the attainder and the award of execution, to demand of the prisoner what he hath to allege why execution should not be awarded against him; and, if he appears to be insane, the judge in his discretion may and ought to reprieve him. Or, the party may plead in bar of execution; which plea may be either pregnancy, the king's pardon, an act of grace, or diversity of person, &c. that he is not the same that was attainted, and the like. In this last case a jury shall be impaneled to try this collateral issue, namely, the identity of his person; and not whether guilty or innocent, for that has been decided before. And in these collateral issues the trial shall be inflanter; and no time allowed the prisoner to make his defence or produce his witnesses, unless he will make oath that he is not the person attainted: neither shall any peremptory challenges of the jury be allowed the prisoner, though formerly such challenges were held to be allowable whenever a man's life was in question. If neither pregnancy, insanity, non-identity, nor other plea, will avail to avoid the judgment, and stay the execution consequent thereupon, the last and surest resort is in the king's most gracious pardon; the granting of which is the most amiable prerogative of the crown. See the article PARDON.