The techniques of the cases involved citizens complaining against innocent victims, often without lawyers. Once brought before magistrates for trial, the hypothetical evidence is assessed by the judges and a formal jury trial would follow. Most convicts at that time were not emotionally or logically capable of defending themselves against a hysterical witness or a harsh court. In general, it could be said that the affected people, the girls, contributed evidence, and other people who confessed to being witches justified it. Verdicts, at that time, were not considered unjust, except for those who were convicted. It was believed that Satan or Lucifer could "possess" anyone's soul, but, by 1693, it had been accepted that faulty procedures and false tests had been passed down by the courts, but the people of the colony still believed that Lucifer was lurking. They believed that he had deceived the souls of the people of the village into believing that the innocent were witches