CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) – More than 170 years after a judge sentenced her to hang for poisoning her stepson, Rebecca Peake was exonerated Friday – by a fake jury.

The Vermont Judicial History Society re-enacted the farm wife’s 1835 trial, presenting closing arguments from its transcripts in a living history exercise held in Orange County’s 19th-century courthouse.

Peake, 60, was accused of poisoning her stepson, Ephraim, with arsenic after her husband, facing mounting debt, gave his farmland to him. The deed, which was signed against Rebecca’s will, required Ephraim to pay the debt and support his father and stepmother.

“That promise was no comfort to Rebecca,” according to Montpelier lawyer Paul Gillies, who staged the “re-trial.” “She did not want to live in his house, and be the subject of his charity, and she grew nervous and distraught over her fear that she would be made homeless if Jonathan died.”

Peake was accused of serving her family a meal of hash that made everyone sick, including the hogs, who were seen vomiting after eating some. The hash was sprinkled with a white powder, family members said.

She didn’t eat it.

The following day, Ephraim got even sicker after eating custard served by Peake. He died several days later, and Peake’s stepdaughter became crippled after the meal.

Dan Richardson, acting as the state’s attorney, argued Friday that the evidence was stacked against Peake, who had bought the arsenic at a Royalton store. She confessed to eight people, although her confessions changed, saying at one time that if she did do it, the devil made her.

“The only reasonable conclusion is that the prisoner poisoned the hash with arsenic,” Richardson said. “The facts show that Emphraim was poisoned three times,” Richardson said.

Peake, who obtained some of the best lawyers in the state, did not participate in her defense. She was portrayed by actress Mary Scripps, who played Peake in “Self Evidence,” a play about the case written by Maura Campbell, of Burlington.

Scripps appeared disheveled and distraught as she sat in court Friday, cowering in a chair next to her lawyer.

Her lawyer, attorney Gerry Tarrant, questioned Peake’s sanity and said there was no evidence she poisoned Ephraim or that he died of arsenic poisoning, since his stomach contents were not analyzed.

“This case is built on an admission of Mrs. Peake and very little circumstantial evidence,” he said.

The 12-member jury of men, women and children – a historical inaccuracy, since women weren’t allowed to serve as jurors then – agreed and acquitted her, saying there was not enough evidence to convict.

That meant that Judge Patricia Zimmerman could set Peake free, instead of condemning her to die.

But that ultimately wasn’t her fate, anyway. Jailed, listening as gallows were being built outside on the town green, Peake poisoned herself with opium she’d been given as a sleep aid.

Gillies, founder of the Vermont Judicial History Society, said the point of the re-enactment was keeping history alive.

“The Society’s ambition is to give an opportunity to peer into the past and see what law was like,” he said.