“If one side tells one sort of propaganda and the other side tells a different sort, you can figure out the truth between them.....This entire issue was discussed by legal scholars several centuries before either of us were born.”
This was no doubt a comfort to women burned at the stake as witches on the jurisprudence of the era.
Witch burning in Salem was a very short-lived phenomenon, put an end to by insisting on objective proof of an overt act of witchcraft, rather than the subjective sensations that were deemed admissible as evidence during the witch trials of that narrow period of hysteria in the new world.
Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake, Novocristos caught “Judaising” in Spain were burnt at the stake, and in the illuminated manuscript of Marco Polo’s travels, there is a picture of a “heretic” being burnt at the stake en route to China. But none of them met this picturesque end on account of rigorous cross-examinations and examination of the evidence and conflicting claims. On the contrary, confessions were extracted under torture, and the testimony of witnesses was not allowed if they were considered unfit to swear before G-d the truth of their statements by reason of being Jews, Moors, women or unrighteous men. I.e., impeachment of testimony by ad hominem.