How did civilization's greatest achievement—the rule of law—become humanity's most efficient killing machine?

In Colonial Salem, 1692, young girls screamed that invisible spirits were attacking them. The accused sat physically present in the courtroom, yet prosecutors claimed her spirit had separated from her body to commit diabolic violence miles away. This was spectral evidence: testimony about crimes committed by invisible forces while the accused was provably elsewhere. Defense became impossible. Alibis became meaningless. And the legal system transformed into an engine of systematic murder.

This two-part series explores how European and American courts deliberately abandoned every principle of justice—presumption of innocence, right to confront accusers, credible witnesses—to prosecute supernatural crimes. Drawing from the 1847 London Journal's extensive investigation into witchcraft prosecution, this episode reveals the sophisticated legal machinery designed to eliminate society's most vulnerable members, primarily women (80-90% of victims), through procedures that appeared rational and legitimate.

Discover how the 1487 manual "Malleus Maleficarum" created new categories of evidence and redefined burden of proof; how Papal "commissions of fire and sword" created mobile death squads answering only to Rome; how Richard III used witchcraft accusations as political weapons (strawberries to execution in under two hours); how King James VI of Scotland personally supervised torture sessions, taking "conscious delight" in extracting confessions; and how shape-shifting accusations created seemingly objective evidence of supernatural transformation that survived into 1845 Scotland.

This isn't primitive superstition—it's the systematic corruption of judicial institutions by learned men who understood exactly what they were creating: a legal framework that could eliminate any targeted population while maintaining the facade of legitimate justice.

Features readings from London Journal (1847), "Malleus Maleficarum" legal procedures, King James VI's "Daemonologie" (1597), and Scottish court records through 1845.