Edward Payson Evans was an American scholar, linguist, educator, and early advocate for animal rights. He is best known for his 1906 book on animal trials, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals.

In legal history, an animal trial was the criminal trial of a non-human animal. Such trials are recorded as having taken place in Europe from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth. The most documented of these trials being from France, but they also occurred in Italy, Portugal, Spain, and other countries. In modern times, it is considered in most criminal justice systems that non-human animals lack moral agency and so cannot be held culpable for an act.