| rdfs:comment | - The Salem Witch Trials were America's first OJ Trial. Unlike the OJ trial, which was a sham run by black friendly Hollywood media elites, the Salem Witch Trials were real trials were justice was served with a side of maize. By all accounts, the trials were successful; The Salem Witch Trials ferreted out witchcraft from the Colonies, permanently ridding Salem, and the rest of God's nation, of evil eyes, boiling cauldrons, and frisky farmer's daughters. A multitude of books claim that the trials occurred in 1692. Nevertheless, the exact year of the Trials is open for debate.
- The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties of colonial , between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authorities. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man, refusing to enter a plea, was ordered to be crushed to death under heavy stones. At least five more of the accused died in prison.
- Between 1692 and 1693 Massachusetts was gripped by an episode of witch fever that saw more than 150 people arrested, often for no better reason than a green and warty complexion. Most of the accused were executed by hanging, though one was crushed beneath a house flown specially from Kansas. At least five others died in prison awaiting trial, most from dysenteric fevers or eye-of-newt poisoning. By the time the panic died down, twelve months after it had begun, women of all ages and social-standings were being accused of involvement in black magic simply for being eccentric, widowed or sexually involved with Satan.
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| abstract | - The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties of colonial , between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authorities. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man, refusing to enter a plea, was ordered to be crushed to death under heavy stones. At least five more of the accused died in prison. Despite being generally known as the "Salem" witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in a variety of towns across the province: Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover, as well as Salem Town, Massachusetts. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Town, but also in Ipswich, Boston, and Charlestown, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted. While not the first or only witch-hunt in or , the story of innocent people being accused and convicted on untrustworthy evidence has secured its place in the cultural imagination of the United States of America. Salem has been invoked as a cautionary tale in response to McCarthyism in the 1950's and day care sex abuse hysteria in the 1980s.
- Between 1692 and 1693 Massachusetts was gripped by an episode of witch fever that saw more than 150 people arrested, often for no better reason than a green and warty complexion. Most of the accused were executed by hanging, though one was crushed beneath a house flown specially from Kansas. At least five others died in prison awaiting trial, most from dysenteric fevers or eye-of-newt poisoning. By the time the panic died down, twelve months after it had begun, women of all ages and social-standings were being accused of involvement in black magic simply for being eccentric, widowed or sexually involved with Satan. While witch fever had been commonplace in medieval Europe, and witches had been previously executed in New England, it remains a mystery why Massachusetts should be so spellbound at this period. Suggestions as to the cause have ranged from hallucinogenic ergot in rye-bread, a future-echo of the McCarthyite era of Reds under the beds panic, or the lack of anything on television in the late seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Massachusians can take pride that the law was applied both vigorously and with rigor at all points, and the witch-trials’ standing has remained so high for so long that over the centuries it has been adopted as a model of jurisprudence by North Korea, Nazi Germany and Arkansas.
- The Salem Witch Trials were America's first OJ Trial. Unlike the OJ trial, which was a sham run by black friendly Hollywood media elites, the Salem Witch Trials were real trials were justice was served with a side of maize. By all accounts, the trials were successful; The Salem Witch Trials ferreted out witchcraft from the Colonies, permanently ridding Salem, and the rest of God's nation, of evil eyes, boiling cauldrons, and frisky farmer's daughters. A multitude of books claim that the trials occurred in 1692. Nevertheless, the exact year of the Trials is open for debate.
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