NATICK, Mass. (May 29, 2015) -- If the students of the Kennedy Middle School were the jury in 1692 when Sarah Good was charged with committing acts of witchcraft, her fate would have been much different. Good was executed in 1692, but was acquitted recently by a jury of middle school students.
Capt. Briana Tellado, the command judge advocate for the Natick Soldier Systems Center, worked with Kennedy sixth-grade teacher Chris Forrest to bring the law into the classroom on Law Day.
The sixth-graders acted as the judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, defendant, witness and jury in the mock trial.
The prosecution in the case called Abigail Williams, who said Sarah Good pinched and bit her when she was playing in the town square with her friend, Elizabeth. The prosecutor asked her what happened to her after meeting the defendant, Sarah Good.
"It was the strangest thing," said Laini Schneider, who portrayed Williams. "I started shaking and screaming uncontrollably. My mother and father could not get me to stop. I would go into these weird trances where I was almost unconscious for minutes at a time. It was so frightening."
In cross examination, the defense counsel, played by Kate Connolly, asked the witness if anyone ever found any marks of these alleged pinches and bites. Williams responded that there weren't any.
"Everyone on our jury thought she was not guilty," said jury foreman Brendan O'Donnell. "There was no evidence of a bite or scratch, and anyone can be born with a birth mark, and going into the trance was pretty convenient."
O'Donnell reflected on his time as a jury foreperson.
"Being on a jury is tough," said O'Donnell. "If you don't pay attention, it could be the difference of an innocent person being found guilty. We would be sad if we made the wrong decision."
The sixth-graders had studied the Salem Witch Trials in fifth grade and reviewed them earlier in this school year.
"We were hoping to provide an opportunity for them to learn more about the judicial system," said Forrest. "Anytime you get hands-on learning in the classroom, it is much more valuable.
"It was fantastic to see the kids focused and interested and see how they deliberated and studied the evidence that was presented. This is the type of learning we like to see in the classroom."
Tellado said that she was impressed by the students who put on the mock trial.
"They had great insight into the jury deliberation process and how our jury system can be more fair -- or sometimes less fair -- than a trial by a judge," Tellado said. "A lot of the students had studied the Salem Witch Trials in their history classes, so they had more knowledge about the case than the other students. Some students wanted to use what they had already knew from the other class in their deliberative process.
"Just like a juror in real life, the students found it challenging to put aside what they already knew about the case and only consider the evidence that was presented to them in the courtroom. Playing jurors also showed the students how important the job of the jury is, because in the witch trials, and in some trials today, if the jury convicts someone of a crime, that person can be sentenced to death."
Sarah Good was executed by hanging on July 29, 1692. If she had the 12 middle school students from Natick as her jury, she would have lived to see her children, Dorothy and Mercy, grow up.
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