Margo Burns
The Coercion of False Confessions at the Salem Witchcraft Trials
Over a third of the people formally accused of witchcraft in the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692-93 confessed falsely — but why? The conventional explanation is that no one who confessed was executed, so when people realized that the Court was sparing confessors, they chose to do so as a legal strategy to save themselves. But this falls apart on closer scrutiny — one of the confessors actually was executed. The timeline of who confessed and when further discounts this as a “strategy.” This presentation will show how the false confessions in Salem fit with present-day sociological research on coercive interrogation techniques used in criminal investigations.
Margo Burns, M.A., is the Project Manager and Associate Editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (salemwitchhunt.org), published in 2009 by the Cambridge University Press, the definitive comprehensive record of legal documents pertaining to the Salem witchcraft trials, organized in chronological order.
