So the Salem Witch Trials were during a time when people in Salem believed that there were many witches among them for really no reason whatsoever. Due to the system people could be accused just because people did not like them. It kind of went like this. 
  
Random guy 1: HE IS A WITCH! 
  
Random guy 2: I am certainly not! 
  
Random guy 1: COURT SESSION NOW! 
  
Judge: So are you a witch? 
  
Random guy 2: Nope 
 
Judge: Execute him! He is lying!
 
Random guy 1: I know he did *insert random thing here* to me!
  
It usually went somewhat like that. So anybody have any thoughts on this?

awesomeguy279 : Yeah, the Salem Witch Trials were brutal, that's for sure. The word 'witch' being so much as whispered often meant someone's death. But you have to understand that back then, when scientific knowledge was still basically mute and where they were ultra-religious, there was a paranoia of anything out of the ordinary.

As a result, a lot of people died who shouldn't have, and it's not even really anyone's fault in particular, it was just their mindset at the time. While you're right in the fact that many people would do things like that, many of those people probably legitamately believed that they were turning in real witches who presented not only a threat to themselves or to their neighbors, but possibly to mankind, Christianity, and God himself. It was a dark time. 

It's honestly one of the less extreme examples of unjustified killings though, not just in the world but in the Americas. On a global scale, the Holocaust was the worst example by far, and in the United States, we have things like the Trail of Tears, which was a horrid abuse of human rights despite the fact that it had to be done for our country to move forward, or the post-civil war lynchings, in which white people would go out, find a black man, and hang him for being black. So the Salem Witch Trials, in summary, aren't comparatively nearly as bad as some of these other examples.

That's my two cents, at least. I'd be happy to hear what other users think.