Corey dies under the stones, asking only for more weight

By September 1692, Salem's witchcraft court had already hanged several of the accused on evidence no court would accept today. Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old farmer arrested that April, refused to plead guilty or innocent, so Sheriff George Corwin had him laid in a field beside the prison and pressed under stones until he died, reportedly asking only for "more weight." Because he never entered a plea, the law could not convict him, and his farm passed to his sons-in-law instead of the colony. His wife, Martha, was hanged three days later…