Anne Bonny and Mary Read were tried at the Admiralty Court in St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, convicted of piracy, and sentenced to hang.
On November 16, 1720, Anne Bonny stood trial alongside Mary Read before the Vice-Admiralty Court convened at St. Jago de la Vega (present-day Spanish Town), Jamaica. The court, operating under English admiralty law extended to the colonies to combat the rampant piracy plaguing Caribbean shipping lanes, heard testimony regarding the pair's participation in raids alongside John Rackham's crew.
Witnesses described the women dressed in men's clothing, armed with pistols and cutlasses, actively participating in the boarding and plunder of vessels. Despite Bonny's later claims regarding her limited culpability, the court found both women guilty of piracy—a capital offense—and sentenced them to death by hanging, the customary punishment meant to serve as a public deterrent to further piracy in the region.
This trial is historically significant as one of the few well-documented instances of women being formally prosecuted for piracy under English maritime law, a domain almost exclusively associated with men. The surviving trial records, preserved in Jamaican and British archival sources, remain a primary source for understanding not only Bonny's fate but the broader legal and social attitudes toward women who transgressed rigid gender boundaries by engaging in violent, seafaring crime.