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Kaetlin Rich
Mr. Sira
English Period 2
10/22/15
Gods Greater Truth
Religion has been affecting the criminal justice system throughout history for hundreds of
years. In Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, Abigail Williams, a seventeen year old puritan maid,
has an affair with John Proctor, a married man. When Proctors wife, Elizabeth, finds out she
fires Abigail and Abigail begins to harbor animosity towards her. She then plots revenge on
Elizabeth Proctor, first by drinking blood in the forest and later in the court accusing her of
witchcraft. This brings on an array of baseless accusations that are potentially deleterious to the
lives of those of the accused. Danforth admits that in ordinary crime people are defended based
up evidence but witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by nature, an invisible crime, is it not?
Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other. He
justifies this when he explains,Therefore we must rely upon her victims that the accusers need
no proof to accuse others of witchcraft. Since Witchcraft is an invisible crime, it can not be
proven and the court agrees without question that they might be lying. The purpose of a court is
to determine ones innocence based upon evidence, however this court is based upon the word of
god and has no need for evidence to be shown.
. As Danforth states The law, based upon the Bible, and the Bible, writ by Almighty
God, forbid the practice of witchcraft, and describe death as the penalty thereof.(Miller 107), he
means that all crime committed must fit in terms with the Bible. The Salem court, based entirely
off of the word of god and the Puritan religion uses no evidence for conviction. And do keep in
mind that the old testament of the Bible is very irrational and using it as a source to prove justice

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in someone is a very ignorant way of thinking. The court seems complacent about their decision
to continuously hang the innocent inexplicably.
As problems perpetuate in Salem, the court continues to base their judgements off the
lies of the accusers and the lives of innocent people are taken by a noose. By the time those
accused had enough evidence to prove their innocence, the Danforth replies,I will not receive a
single plea for pardon or postponement...Postponement now would speaks a floundering on my
part This is saying that even if the court realizes that they are wrong, they will continue to to
hang innocent to avoid having the church look incompetent. So unable to dissuade the court to
dissipate the problem of witchcraft, the trials take the lives of eighteen innocent people. In a
pious society, whose court system used god to murder over a dozen people, the judicial system is
to blame.

Work Cited
Arthur Miller; The Crucible. McDougal Littell, United States of America, 1997

CHECKLIST

YES/NO (me) YES/NO (name:

Jazmine F.

You have a correct heading.

Yes

yes

You have a header.

Yes

yes

You have a title that is centered (its NOT

underlined, bolded, or larger than size 12.

Yes

yes

Your entire paper is Times New Roman, size

12.

Yes

yes

You have a TAG sentence.

Yes

yes

Within the first paragraph, you make a claim

of who or what is to blame.

Yes

yes

You have bolded @ least 10 vocabulary

Yes

yes

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words.
You have at least 3 pieces of textual
evidence.

Yes

yes

You lead into each quote.

Yes

yes

Your quote is properly cited. ex: . court

(Miller 43).

Yes

yes

You spend more time discussing who/what is

to blame and why THAN you do
summarizing the play.

Yes

yes

You unequivocally prove your claim/thesis.

Yes

yes

You have a works cited page.

Yes

yes