By BONNIE LEE STRUNK

Special to The Press

Imagine sitting in a courtroom and hearing a jury render a “not guilty” verdict, only to learn the judge has other plans.

Not only did he overturn the verdict, but he had pronounced the defendant guilty even before the trial began.

Just two days later, the defendant, Bridget Bishop, was hanged.

If this sounds like a tale of horror in an unjust court system of a Third World country, think again.

Sad spectacles like this are an embarrassing part of our country’s history in the late 1600s during the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts.

This barbaric history came to life recently when the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum in Allentown re-enacted the trial of the first woman charged with witchcraft and executed.

She was far from the last.

The witch trials led to the execution of 20 people — 14 women and six men — before the state’s general court in 1702 declared the trials to be unlawful.

In dimly-lit, macabre court chambers, the bewigged judge, or magistrate, as he called himself, was expertly played by Joseph Garrera, executive director of the Heritage Museum.

Four museum employees played the roles of witnesses and the defendant.

More than 80 people attended the historical performance, and Garrera chose jury members from the audience.

The event was funded in partnership with the Pennsylvania Tourism Office.

Narration before and after the re-enactment emphasized that the trials were not fiction.

These frightening events were based on community hysteria that led to the tragic deaths of innocent citizens.

So-called evidence presented by the magistrate and witnesses was scanty and often secondhand.

Throughout the trial, the defendant maintained she was innocent and had never seen the witnesses before.

The witnesses, two men and one woman, presented dramatic, fanciful evidence, attempting to prove Bishop was a witch.

They also claimed they had never told a lie and were trustworthy.

According to the witnesses, Bishop caused a wheel to fall off a grain cart and a bridle to fall off a horse.

She made money disappear from a man’s pocket and brought the devil and his “big book” into someone’s house.

She was accused of pinching and choking people while they slept.

She supposedly abducted the female witness and flew her around town on a broom.

More startling, she was accused of killing several children in Salem, Mass.

One witness said Bishop made a black cat appear and disappear.

A male witness said he saw her one night at the foot of his bed in a red coat and black hat.

She was “hopping around the bed,” he asserted.

Bishop retorted, “I am 60 years old. I don’t hop.”

The only physical evidence presented in the courtroom were a broom and chains.

The magistrate, with great fanfare, held up an ordinary-looking broom and asked Bishop, “Why was this in your chambers?”

Astounded, Bishop replied it was indeed her broom and that one can be found in all homes.

The magistrate then threw the heavy chains onto the floor and announced they were found in her bedroom.

“I never saw them before,” Bishop cried.

Apparently such weak “evidence” was all it took to convict and hang innocent residents of the Salem community who were accused of witchcraft in the 1690s.

The magistrate declared the evidence against Bishop “compelling and vast,” and announced it was “time to rid Salem of this witch.”

When polled, the jury disagreed.

Two of the three jurors pronounced Bishop “not guilty.”

Not only did the magistrate overturn the verdict, he also charged the two jurors who disagreed with him with witchcraft and had them imprisoned to await their own trials.

The convincing production was a startling history lesson and an excellent demonstration of the museum’s mission as a teaching institution and a repository for collections of historical Americana.

When the re-enactment ended, members of the jury who had been selected from the audience were asked how they reached their verdict.

Sandra Park of East Greenville, the only juror to find Bishop guilty, said she was “playing the role.”

“I saw specials on PBS about the witch trials,” she explained. “They were ridiculous.

“I said ‘guilty’ because that’s how the trials always went.

“I went along with the history.”

Dennis Bellesfield of Allentown, who found Bishop not guilty, faulted the magistrate.

“The judge led the jurors,” Bellesfield said. “He had his mind made up at the beginning.

“The evidence was absurd.

“There were a lot of accusations and they were outrageous.”

Alene Shafnisky of Lower Macungie also found Bishop not guilty.

An attorney, Shafnisky “felt like a lot of evidence was not presented.”

She specifically questioned the secondhand stories about Bishop killing a few children.

“Why weren’t the parents presenting testimony?” she asked.

She concluded the charges of witchcraft “were based on hysteria.”

As for the magistrate charging her and Bellesfield with witchcraft because of their verdict, Shafnisky proclaimed, “I stand up for justice.

“If it means my life, so be it.”

Unfortunately, jurors willing to take that bold stand were difficult, if not impossible, to find during the 1692 Salem witch trials that led to the needless executions of Bridget Bishop and other innocent citizens.