When Susan Johnson died in Sussex County in 1683, her husband, John Johnson, Sr., was held under suspicion of her murder. In the trial that followed, members of the jury reported that they found not "one sign of Murder" on the body. The rendering of a verdict of not guilty has swathed John in innocence as the case has been reviewed over the intervening years.

While a murder trial held at the court in Lewes, county seat of Sussex at the time, would not be exhibited as anything out of the ordinary, one aspect of this case has furnished a verdict of unforgettable! All 12 jurors in the Johnson trial were females. The record, on file in The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, states that the jury was composed of a dozen "good women and true." That same record gives the names of the seven justices present during the trial; its goes without saying that all of the officers were male.

Discussion of the case has caused persons to inquire into the reason for an all-woman jury two and a half centuries prior to the granting of suffrage to America’s women via the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It is certain that the names of the 1683 jury panel did not originate from voter registration and motor vehicle registration lists, as is the case in present-day Sussex County, Delaware. It has occurred to this writer that a clue to the selection of an all-female jury may be detected in the expectation of the jurors to examine the body of Susan Johnson. Modesty, perhaps, dictated the naming of examiners of the same sex as the deceased.

Suspicion had been cast upon the spouse of the dead woman when one Jeffery Summerford affirmed that Johnson had struck his own wife with a rope "on the Burr of ye Ear." The statement, however, was later denied by Summerford and consequently deemed of "no Vallew" by the judge. That denial, coupled with the decision of the jury, provided acquittal for the suspect.

The all-woman jury was the subject of a float prepared by members of the DeVries Business and Professional Women of Lewes in 1981 as their entry in a parade honoring Lewes’s 350^th anniversary. A dozen members, dressed in an early fashion with a Dutch flavor, represented the jury. A white-wigged gentleman portrayed the presiding judge, while one of the jury ladies displayed a sign boldly proclaiming the decision, NOT GUILTY. The float was awarded third prize by those judging the entries in the parade.

A 1963 column of Believe It or Not by Robert Ripley makes a strong statement. The colorful comic-strip design portrays the women in the jury and reads:

In truth, history doth tend toward repetition. A decision at the completion of a case heard in Delaware’s Superior Court in December 1988 was issued by an all-female jury, as noted in a newspaper account.