How Massachusetts formally exonerated the last person convicted of witchcraft in the colony, efforts are being made to clear the names of the 46 people wrongfully accused of witchcraft in the neighboring colony. Connecticut during the 17th century Puritan witch hunt.
329 years after she was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, the Massachusetts state senate amended the state budget to include a provision to exonerate Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last of the people convicted during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 to be legally vindicated from false charges. The waiver provision was included in the final state budget bill that passed both houses of the Legislature and was signed by Governor Charlie Baker on July 28, 2022.
Johnson, who historians believe was intellectually disabled, confessed to witchcraft in 1693 and was sentenced to death. He was later granted a pardon and lived to the age of 77. Her case had been largely overlooked until Carrie LaPierre, an eighth-grade civics teacher at North Andover Middle School, took up her cause. LaPierre used Johnson’s case to teach his students about historical research, how a bill becomes law and how to petition your representatives. “I’m excited and relieved,” LaPierre told The New York Times, “but also disappointed that I didn’t get to talk about it with the kids” since they’re on summer vacation. “It’s been such a big project.”
“These students have set an incredible example of the power of advocacy and standing up for others who don’t have a voice,” she said. State Sen. Diana DiZoglio (pictured), representing the area where Johnson lived and introduced the exemption legislation.
“Although we’ve come a long way since the horrors of the witch trials, women today still too often find their rights challenged and concerns dismissed,” DiZoglio told the Massachusetts State House News Service. “There continue to be great injustices, with attacks on women and the rights of marginalized populations. It was unacceptable then and it remains unacceptable now that she and other women have been deemed unworthy of the dignity and respect they deserve.”
While the Salem witch trials are often considered an isolated case of mass hysteria, Johnson’s case reflects some of the inequities still present in the death penalty today. He was probably intellectually disabled—his own grandfather called him “simple at best,” and according to the Courthouse News, “Boston merchant Robert Calef, who opposed witch prosecutions, described Johnson and her fellow defendant Mary Post as “two of the most senseless and ignorant creatures to be found.'” She was politically powerless, not only as a single woman, but also as a member of a disadvantaged family: at least 20 of her relatives were accused of witchcraft.
It is not clear why Johnson’s case was upheld, although two possible explanations have been offered. Johnson never married or had children, so he had no direct descendants to work with to clear his name. She also shares a name with her mother, Elizabeth Johnson Sr., also wrongfully convicted as a witch but later exonerated, so there may have been administrative confusion.
Johnson’s exoneration also sheds light on the movement to posthumously exonerate the eleven people wrongfully executed and at least 46 wrongfully accused of witchcraft in neighboring Connecticut between 1647 and 1697. Connecticut state law currently has no mechanism for issuing posthumous pardons, But a group called the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project, which included descendants of people executed for witchcraft, wants to change that.
State Rep. Jane Garibay has indicated she will sponsor a bill to authorize posthumous pardons and hopes, “if there’s a way forward,” it will be enacted in the 2023 legislative session. In a July 15, 2022, editorial, The The Hartford Courant said that “Connecticut has been somewhat slow to recognize its place in the history of injustice that caused the uproar here.” Creating a posthumous pardon process, the paper wrote, is “what Connecticut needs to do.”
Johnson’s case has “parallels today with people who don’t look or sound like us or who have characteristics that can make people value them as worthy and important,” DiZoglio said. Despite its age, the case remains relevant because “we see people targeted all the time with political ends or agendas.”
In recent years there have been numerous posthumous exonerations, mostly of young black defendants falsely accused of crimes against white victims. On August 31, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam posthumously pardoned the “Martinsville Seven,” seven young black men who were wrongfully executed in Virginia in 1951 on charges of raping a white woman. On June 13, 2022, a Pennsylvania court acquitted Alexander McClay Williams, a 16-year-old black teenager who was wrongfully executed in Pennsylvania in 1931 on charges of murdering a white woman. George Stinney, a 14-year-old black boy, was wrongfully executed in South Carolina in 1944 for the murder of two white girls. He was exonerated posthumously in 2014.
All ten defendants were sentenced to death by all-white juries after perfunctory trials. Stinney was the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. Williams is the youngest person executed in Pennsylvania.
sources
Thomas Harrison, Massachusetts grants absolution to its last remaining witchCourthouse News, July 28, 2022; William J. Cole, 329 years later, the last Salem ‘witch’ exonerated by Massachusetts legislatorsAssociated Press, May 26, 2022; Susannah Sudborough, Mass. Senate clears name of final victim of Salem witch trialsBoston.com, May 26, 2022; Publisher: Connecticut ‘the witches of yesteryear should be exoneratedHartford Courant, July 15, 2022; Vimal Patel, The last sentence in the Salem witch trials is passed 329 Years laterThe New York Times, July 31, 2022