Felonies & Early America

Felonies & Early America
I've run into an interesting historical question: how did America punish ex-felons (those who had served their sentence, and were still breathing) when the Bill of Rights was adopted?

Before the Revolution, there were something like 168 capital crimes in English law. American colonial law somewhat followed English law, and somewhat didn't, varying by colony. I see that New York in 1770 and again in 1771 (after the Crown vetoed the first try) made counterfeiting a capital crime, punishable by "the Pains of Death, without Benefit of Clergy." 5 The Colonial Laws Of New York From The Year 1664 To The Revolution 38, 163. There are two 1772 private relief acts that provide for the same penalty for perjury in relation to bankruptcy cases. Ibid., 421, 424.

Pennsylvania, as another example, from 1718 until 1776, had a pretty impressive stack of capital crimes, including burglary, rape, "the crime against nature," malicious maiming, witchcraft by conjuration, arson, and counterfeiting. O.F. Lewis, The Development Of American Prisons And Prison Customs, 1776-1845 12-13 (Albany, N.Y.: Prison Association of New York, 1892). I know that Penn. was hanging people for burglary in this period--or at least, newspaper accounts are reporting that they are doing so.

By 1786, Pennsylvania repeals capital punishment for burglary, robbery, and buggery (which includes bestiality, oral sex, and anal sex). In 1794, they repeal it for everything except first degree murder. 2 Congressional Globe 456, 19th Cong., 1st sess. (1826). A lot of other states are a lot slower than Pennsylvania on this.

Felony in English law is a very muddled concept. Blackstone's Commentaries, Book 4, ch. 7, makes the argument that the defining characteristic of felony was not that it was capital, but that you were subject to loss of all your lands or goods. Loss of limb or life was a "superadded" penalty, common in English statutory law, but by no means certain for all felonies.

Until the development of prisons (which develop slowly in the early Republic, especially in the South), what happened to violent felons who weren't executed? I'm looking to see what sort of legal disqualifications were imposed on them. I presume that they lacked the right to vote--I recall seeing that Connecticut passed such a measure around 1816. But what about before then--especially in the Constitutionally critical period around adoption of the Bill of Rights? If you didn't get your neck stretched--or you served your sentence in one of the small number of prisons then in existence--what penalties did you suffer on release?

If you can find anything that answers this question, it sure would be helpful for a law review article I am trying to finish and shove out the door.