It has taken more than three centuries, but the last ‘witch’ of the so-called Salem witch trials has been officially acquitted. That happened 329 years after Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was sentenced to death for witchcraft in the then English colony of Massachusetts. That is now a US state.
There was no execution in 1693, but Elizabeth did not receive reparation either. The case received new attention when a group of high school students in Massachusetts took a closer look at her case for citizenship education. Senator Diana DiZoglio then took up the matter and ensured that the reparation would be legally regulated.
Johnson is the last accused witch from the Salem trials to be acquitted. In the seventeenth century, twenty men and women from the city of Salem and the surrounding area were executed on charges of witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, one man was crushed to death with stones. Seven others died in prison. At least two hundred others were suspected.
Miscarriages of justice
Johnson avoided execution because the governor overturned her sentence after it emerged that there were widespread miscarriages of justice in Salem. In the more than three centuries that followed, dozens of suspects were acquitted posthumously. Johnson’s mother was also acquitted, but not Johnson himself. It is unclear why, but her name was not previously on the lists for reparation.
“Elizabeth’s story and struggles are still very topical,” said Senator DiZoglio. “We’ve come a long way since the horrors of the witch trials, but women’s rights are all too often hampered.”
–
