Assuming this is about beliefs would imply the claims were made in earnest. In many (if not the vast majority?) of cases, this seems questionable. For instance during the Salem Witch Trials you even had a Minister [1] executed for witchcraft. His accusers were men who he owed debts to, and the evidence was a farce. It's not like he was executed because of a society, drowned in their own beliefs, stumbled upon passable evidence of his crimes in an otherwise objective fashion. He was executed because some people really didn't like him and simply weaponized the fears of the day, and that was more the rule than exception.

To me the risk seems to be when something becomes so popular to hate that nobody is willing to defend the accused. And this is made even worse due to an opposite bias in the other direction. Demonize and call for even more draconian treatment of the accused and you can signal your own incredible virtue. As his execution, Burroughs had turned the crowd to his side with a moving speech, as well as a recital of The Lord's Prayer, which a witch was not supposed to be able to do. But fear not, along came some power seeking pompous posturing poser who offered his own counter-speech, an event recounted in a book he'd release the following year.

And this is a pattern that has repeated endlessly throughout history. All that changes is whatever one needs to label somebody.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Burroughs