Dorothy Talbye trial

The Dorothy Talbye Trial (d. 1638) is an early American example of execution of a mentally-ill woman for murder, at a time when people with severe mental illness were treated no differently from ordinary criminals. Talbye was hanged in 1639 for killing her three-year-old daughter. She claimed that God told her to do so. Although Puritan Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony considered Talbye to be possessed by Satan, the penalty for murder was necessarily death.