- Historic Sites Ordeal By Touch Up until the last century in
some parts of the country, a murderer’s guilt could legally be
determined by what happened when he or she touched the victim’s
corpse April/May 1986 | Volume 37, Issue 3 In 1646 in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Martin was pregnant and
unmarried. Her paramour was a married man, but it was her status
as a single woman that determined the nature of her crime. She
faced punishment, if her misdeed was discovered, only for
fornication; had she been married, her crime would have been
adultery, punishable by death. The God of the Puritans of
Massachusetts was the God of the Old Testament, and it was to
His word that they looked in codifying their capital crimes.
They cited passages in the Pentateuch as the authority for
fourteen of the fifteen crimes punishable by death. On the
subject of adultery the Book of Leviticus was clear: “And the
man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he
that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife,