"Almost all societies have made laws and prosecuted people for going against those laws, but the question of which behaviors to sanction and which to censure has always been controversial and remains influx" (Rice 4). In both the book The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and the case of the Salem witch trials, the laws of society have been brought onto the surface only to be ignored, taking out the sin of omission by murdering people without proof of their guilt. Both incidents also display sins of omission when the people who are sure of the victims" innocence didn't take action to prevent the murders.
In the book The Ox-Bow Incident a mob forms with one intention, to find the cattle rustlers and kill them. Since they town heard that Kinkaid had been shot, the people of Bridger's Wells displayed no concern as to whether or not the people they were accusing were guilty. They were more concerned with not looking suspicious and following the pack mentality. Even Art points out that the mob was set out to hang a group of men for killing Kinkaid and rustling cattle, and that there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. .
"In the town of Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, several young girls, stimulated by supernatural tales told by a West Indian slave, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused three women of witchcraft. Under pressure, the accused women named others in false confessions" (Encyclopedia Brittanica). People soon began to believe their accusation of the truth, with no proof that it was the truth. All over the town of Salem people were suspicious of their neighbors being possessed by the devil, with their only reasoning for feeling this being that there was a war close to their town, which meant that the devil was close to them (An Account of Events in Salem). This amount of information wasn't enough to prove that any of the people being accused were definitely disobeying the laws of society, but the victims were still hung without complete evidence of their guilt.
