Over the past two weeks, I have written about the human tendency to believe in magic and witchcraft, and how those beliefs should influence or understanding of history. But we are the descendants of the same human beings who universally believed in witchcraft in the past. We think with the same brains and feel with the same emotions. We still see witches where none exist.
To illustrate modern witch hunts, I’ll examine three famous court cases where innocent people were convicted in the face of exculpatory evidence.
The Leo Frank Case
On April 26th, 1913, 13 year old Mary Phagan was found murdered on the basement of the factory where she worked. Early the next morning, Atlanta detectives went to the house of Leo Frank, the factory’s superintended, to bring him to the station. The detectives thought Leo Frank was nervous, and immediately concluded he had been involved in the crime. From then on, the detectives interpreted the evidence through the lens of that belief. Even when they discovered that Jim Conley, a life-long criminal with a history of violence against women had been involved in the case, they assumed Leo Frank had been the primary instigator. Wild rumors of a sexual nature were used in the press against Frank—he couldn’t have normal sexual relations with his wife, he bed the young girls and boys at his factory, and so on. Leo Frank was convicted and ultimately lynched two years later.
The Lindy Chamberlain Case
On the evening of August 17th, 1980, Lindy Chamberlain, the wife of a 7th-day Adventist priest, went to her camping tent on the Australian outback. When she didn’t see her baby Azaria, she immediately assumed wild dogs or dingoes had dragged Azaria away. A desperate search for little Azaria failed, only finding pieces of clothing. That seemed to be the end of it, as all campers corroborated her story and an initial police inquest concluded that Azaria had been killed by dingoes.
But a series of television interviews doomed the Chamberlains to immense suffering. In the interviews Lindy Chamberlain appeared strange, and used religious language not well known to most Australians. People starting believing she had murdered her child. After an amazingly biased trial, she was convicted to life in prison for the murder of Azaria, while her husband was convicted as accessory after the fact. The Chamberlains would not be fully cleared until 2012.
The Amanda Knox Case
On the morning of November 2nd, 2007, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was found dead in her apartment in the Italian town of Perugia. With no clear direction to the investigation, the lead investigator and prosecutor zeroed in on Amanda Knox, and American student and roommate of Ms. Kercher. The prosecutor spun a wild theory of satanic rituals lead by a she-devil, and sought to convince the people of Perugia of it. Considerable police and prosecutorial misconduct resulted in a conviction of Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, along with a young career criminal of African origin. It would be nearly a decade before Knox and her then-boyfriend were finally free of the outrageous charges.
Modern Witch-Hunts
The three cases I’ve mentioned bear considerable resemblance to witch scares.
First, the accused were outsiders breaking social norms. Leo Frank was nervous on the morning of his interrogation—but Leo Frank was a nervous wreck with little confidence in social situations. Lindy Chamberlain was a foreigner, a New Zealander living in Australia. She practiced a minority religion and thought it was her Christian duty to avoid showing grief. Amanda Knox seems to have little social awareness, and she was of course a foreigner living in Italy.
Second, wild sexual paranoia appeared in the three cases. The Leo Frank accusers believed he practiced unnatural sex with both boys and girls. The Chamberlains were accused of being part of a satanic sexual court. And Amanda Knox, of course, was portrayed as a sexual fiend and leader of a satanic cult.
Third, the desire to believe in the guilt of the accuse went beyond the power of confirmation bias. Once people believed in the guilt of the accused, no amount of sound evidence could move them. Normal actions were taken as proof of guilt. Leo Frank hiring northern lawyers was an affront to Georgia. Lindy Chamberlain was accused of being a publicity-hound for trying to defend herself. Amanda Knox’s confidence at her first trial was a sign of disrespect.
These three characteristics appear during witch scares; the accused are often social outcasts, absurd sexual theories are the norm, and belief in guilt, once established in the minds of the mob cannot be shaken. We may no longer believe in magic, but we still look for witches under the bed.
