Did you know?

[Care4all]

That the last time common law was used to put people to death in America was for the Salem witch trials?

And that after this travesty, our laws here in America were changed to reflect, 'we are all presumed INNOCENT, until PROVEN guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'

I guess before that we could be presumed guilty....we had to prove innocence?

 

[strollingbones]

hmmm look into what women had to do to prove they werent witches.....basically one test was pond dipping...if you lived you were a witch...if not....their bad....

Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities. At least five more of the accused died in prison. 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 Village, but also in Ipswich, Boston and Charlestown, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted. 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 (Giles Corey) who refused to enter a plea was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so.

Salem witch trials - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

millions have been killed for being witches...currently in africa people are dying for being witches....

 

[California Girl]

That the last time common law was used to put people to death in America was for the Salem witch trials?

And that after this travesty, our laws here in America were changed to reflect, 'we are all presumed INNOCENT, until PROVEN guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'

I guess before that we could be presumed guilty....we had to prove innocence?

Unless you're foreign and the CEO of an energy corporation.

 

[dilloduck]

Are people born witches or do they choose to be them ? It's important to discuss because it relates directly as to how they should be treated.

 

[Oddball]

That the last time common law was used to put people to death in America was for the Salem witch trials?

And that after this travesty, our laws here in America were changed to reflect, 'we are all presumed INNOCENT, until PROVEN guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'

I guess before that we could be presumed guilty....we had to prove innocence?

Unless you're someone judged to be carrying "too much" cash.

 

[Care4all]

That the last time common law was used to put people to death in America was for the Salem witch trials?

And that after this travesty, our laws here in America were changed to reflect, 'we are all presumed INNOCENT, until PROVEN guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'

I guess before that we could be presumed guilty....we had to prove innocence?

Unless you're someone judged to be carrying "too much" cash.

ain't that the truth!!

 

[Middleman]

The witch trials were aimed at stripping childless widows of the property left to them by their husbands.

 

[dilloduck]

IRS does that now

 

[Middleman]

irs does that now

lol

 

[boedicca]

An aside:

I read a book a few years ago called "Poisons of the Past". Based on medical records collected during the Russian Revolution, and the food and weather patterns in other areas, the author theorized that the violence of the Salem Witch Trials, the French Revolution as well as the Russian one were influenced by the peasant classses' largely rye based diet being poisoned with ergot (a type of fungus which has a hallucinatory affect on humans - like natural LSD).

It was quite fascinating.