Pressure can force people into doing deranged actions. When innocent people plead guilty or make incriminating statements the main reason is because they feel guilty or know more inside information. There have been many cases in which an innocent person was secretly blackmailed or forced into pleading guilty. The mental state of a confessor is also vital in knowing the truth. Confessions from juveniles is usually unreliable because most of the time they don’t understand the situation completely and they can also be manipulated easier than an adult could. Mentally capable adults confess when they’re innocent for a variety of reasons, exhaustion from excessive interrogation,a belief that they could be released if they confessed,or that they truly do feel guilty. Pressured confessions are less common, but there have been cases. False confessions are a hazard in trial cases and can also give an innocent person a cruel sentence. There were many cases of false confessions. One of which is the “Salem Witches trail.” Many people falsely confessed for different reasons. Tituba was the f...
The Salem Witch Trials occurred from 1692 to 1693. When two girls, aged 9 and 11, started having strange and peculiar fits, the Puritans believed that the cause of these actions was the work of the devil. The children accused three women of afflicting them: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. Tituba was a Caribbean slave owned by the Parris family. Sarah Good was a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. Tituba admitted, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” She described seeing red cats, yellow birds, black dogs, and a black man who asked her to sign his “book”. She confessed to signing the book. All three wo...
Argument: The argument is between Tituba and the examiner. “By confessing early on, Tituba avoided the ordeal of going to trial, joining with the afflicted girls in providing key evidence against accused witches."2 It was very clear in her examination that Tituba didn’t mean any harm to the girls, and they she did not understand why everything took place.
The Salem witch trials of 1692 were one of the bloodiest witch-hunts in America colonial history. The event started in the house of the new minister of Salem, Samuel Parris, when his daughter, Betty, suffered from mysterious symptoms, and later she accused her slave, Tibuta, for using witchcraft on her. Later, two other women, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne, were accused of using witchcraft on other girls; right after the accusations, they were arrested (Lecture 9/13/2016). As a result, the hunt of witches began which led to hundreds of arrests, and nineteen accused were hanged (Text 190). Although three hundred years have passed, the true cause of the episode remains a mystery. Many scholars have conducted numerous studies of the trails, however,
McCann, Joseph. “A Conceptual Framework for Identifying Various Types of Confessions.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 16 (1998): 441-453. Web. 8 January 2014.
Donna M. Campbell. "The Salem Witch Trials." wsu. n.p., 2010. Web. 18 February 2014. .
Numerous individuals may be quick to accuse others of wrong doings that are not necessarily the truth. In this matter, it is evident in the Salem Witch Trails, which happened in 1692, where individuals accused their own neighbors of witchcraft because of unforeseen death or sickness. Moreover, it led to 200 innocent human-beings that were accused of worshiping the devil’s work, which led to 19 helpless individuals who were hanged because of these untruthful allegations. Furthermore, the Salem Witch Trails were a historical event that is due to lack of knowledge, selfishness, and inhumanity.
The background of Tituba is not well known, but she was more known as a slave broughten in from Barbados that was bought by Samuel Parris. The circumstances (being accused of witchcraft and being a witch) that enclosed within Tituba’s confessions and her denials of ever being a witch (Elaine G. Breslaw. Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies) When Tituba was being examined to see if she truly was a witch, she had confessions that she claimed to be true.
Hinds, Maurene J. Witchcraft on Trial: From the Salem Witch Hunts to the Crucible. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
In Salem, around the early 1600’s, witch hunts broke out to try and determine the underlying reason for the twitching and ticking of the citizens. Though, perhaps witchcraft was not the reason for the abnormal ways in which these people acted, but there was a more radical explanation. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, many young girls of Salem, including Betty Paris, Ruth Putnam, Abigail Williams, and Mary Warren were accused of going into the woods with Reverend Parris’ slave, Tituba, where she apparently had them conjuring Ruth’s dead sisters. To do this, the girls danced around a fire, some naked, all while Tituba sang songs from her native country, Barbados. This, evidently was not something these Puritan girls were to be doing,
During the 1690s, the Salem Witchcraft Trials occurred. However, they did not start in Salem, they occurred first in Danver (Starkey vii). This atrocity of an event was first started because of the fantasies of very little girls. These girl’s accusations created the largest example of witch hysteria on record (Starkey viii). During this time, the authorities had arrested over 150 people from more than two different towns (Gragg ix). Salem however, was not the only town that had girls saying there were witches in their town (Godbeer ix). Many people tried to escape, but that didn’t go to well for them (Godbeer x).
Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village, and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean black magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred?
The year 1692 marked a major event in history in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. The Salem Witchcraft Trials still leaves this country with so many questions as to what happened in that small town. With all the documentation and accounts of the story, people are still wondering why 19 people died as a result of these trials. This paper will discuss the events leading up to the Salem Witch Trials and the events that took place during and after the trials, and the men and women who were killed or spent the remainder of their lives in jail. The Salem Witch Trials has become one of the countries most fascinating stories.
The notorious witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts occurred from June through September. It is a brief, but turbulent period in history and the causes of the trials have long been a source of discussion among historians. Many try to explain or rationalize the bizarre happenings of the witch hunts and the causes that contributed to them. To understand the trials and how they came to be, we must first examine the ideals and views of the people surrounding the events. Although religious beliefs were the most influential factor, socioeconomic tensions, and ergot poisoning are also strongly supported theories. A combination of motives seems the most rational explanation of the frenzy that followed the illness of the two girls. This paper looks closely at the some of the possible causes of one of the most notable occurrences in history.
The Salem Trials took place between the 10th of June and the 22nd of 1692 and in this time nineteen people. In addition to this one man was pressed to death and over 150 people where sent to jail where four adult and one infant died. Although when compared to other witch-hunts in the Western world, it was ‘a small incident in the history of a great superstition,’ but has never lost its grip on our imagination’ . It’s because of this that over the last three centuries many historians have analysed the remaining records of the trials in order to work out what the causes and events were that led to them.
As the story of Tituba unfolds, it reveals a strong and kind hearted young woman, very different from the Tituba we meet in The Crucible. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem unveils for the reader, Tituba's life, loves, and losses. Her long and arduous journey through life is inspired by her many female counterparts, yet also hindered by her insatiable weakness for men, who also press upon her the realities of life.