posted
As long as the type of torture is limited so it's not too severe, sure why not?! I mean, it's not like those limits would ever be crossed.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
What if the suspect isn't the only criminal involved? I'm not saying I think this is likely, but I'm just trying to come up with a scenario, however remote, that might make it the right choice for him not to talk. Like, boy is alive but will be killed if the suspect talks to someone. Then in becomes a question of which is worse- death or the feared conditions under which the boy might be kept.
If the boy is already dead as feared, it isn't worth torturing the guy to get the info.
If the boy is possibly alive somewhere without a caretaker and going to die soon, then will-bending drugs would be justified.
Are will-bending drugs considered torture? I would think so but I don't know how others feel. I think being found in posession of a missing child is an adequate crime to lose certain freedoms though.
And under my first scenario, if such a pact existed I'm sure that him getting caught would trigger the murder as much as him just telling people where the boy is.
I felt kind of good about in "Guarding Tess" where the special agent shoots that guy's foot.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I see two big problems with justifying torture under any circumstance.
1. Those who have used torture to obtain information nearly always claim that their circumstances are extraordinary and therefore call for extraordinary means.
2. It is well established that information obtained undertorture is highly unreliable. If then we have an extraordinary need for truth, torture is the opposite of what we need.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Is this a case (or are there any cases) where it would be justified to offer the perp some sort of plea bargain/bribe for information that leads to finding the boy.
If say law makers were to offer him a dramatically reduced sentence if he provided information that lead to finding the boy alive would you find that satisfactory? How much "reduction" would be acceptable?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Almost any amount, although as a practical matter I'd prefer a very long sentence with the deal portion suspended. Show him the solitary confinement cell, tell him he's looking at life in it, and he probably won't think too hard about the suspension aspects. That way, he can be intensely supervised and put back in easily. Maybe require a GPS device as part of release.
Of course, that would be my end position. I'd start with a much lower offer.
The other alternative is to send a cop in to pretend to be the guy's lawyer (a lawyer couldn't do it). Sure, any information isn't usable, but you've still got everything that came before that - including the fact he was found with the girl. I don't think I actually favor that, due to the long-term effects, but it might work.
Not a second. This is the THIRD time he has gone after children. He shouldn't have been allowed out after the first.
Offer him something like a nicer prison. From all those Grisham books I hear that federal prisons are way better then state prisons, something like that.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
I don't know of any specific (edit: criminal) laws against. The confession and anything derived from it would not be, of course. There would be a possible civil rights suit against the officers and the department, but I can't think of any criminal charges that would apply. There could be, I suppose. It's not strictly "legal," though.
The thing is, we're talking about alternatives to torture to save the kid's life. I think we left "legal" behind a while ago in the conversation.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
We need to find a way to make people talk without torture. There has to some type of drug that can make someone tell you want you want to know. Someone needs to spend some money researching what it is. A humane way to get the answers.
Or have they already tried and failed?
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I believe that torture would fall under the heading of "cruel and unusual punishment." In addition, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Combined, these would make use of torture against a suspect completely inappropriate and unconstitutional. I know it's tempting in some cases:
- we KNOW the guy did it. - the clock is ticking (a life, or many lives, in the balance) - the crime is particularly heinous.
But, really, our Constitution (and, one would hope, our values) are there to get us to rise above the baser needs of a mob mentality and go for something that approaches stable and resolute justice.
The reason we can't make exceptions is that we can't know ahead of time what the outcome of a fair trial would be. And, state-ordered torture of an innocent (or rather, "not guilty" person) would be unconscionable. Or it should be.
Given that our administration (and presumably past Presidential administrations) have condoned the CIA practice of disappearing suspects to lands where they would be tortured, I suspect that we have already got a few stains on the national conscience in this regard.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
And truth serums are illegal. For that same reason, I suspect. I, personally, would have no problem torturing the guy. None whatsoever. However, torture rarely works, for one, because people will say anything to stop the pain. And two, though I would have no problem torturing him I wouldn't, not because of morality or something like that, but because if torture is used then it sets a precedent for worse things, and it sets a precedent for oppurtunities in which innocents will be tortured.
Posts: 28 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:The reason we can't make exceptions is that we can't know ahead of time what the outcome of a fair trial would be.
Yes, but this guy was caught with a survivor of a massacre. It strains logic to give him a presumption of innocence. If he is innocent somehow, he would be singing like a canary, with or without a lawyer, and his story could be checked out.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Not only is it useless in terms of getting information (people tortured will say anything at all they think their torturers want to hear), it's wrong.
I do not want to be a citizen of a state that sanctions torture. I just don't. Not ever. Ever. If we do that, then we're the badguys.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Not only is it useless in terms of getting information (people tortured will say anything at all they think their torturers want to hear),
This is wrong. It's not useless. It's efficacy is questionable in most investigatory circumstances. But if the information can be checked quickly, then this objection doesn't apply. The standard hypo would be finding out where the bomb is in the building.
It still might be wrong. I tend to think it is. But we need to decide it's wrong for accurate reasons. That includes judging its merits in curcumstance where it could be useful.
posted
Some of the "truth serums" are fun, at least to most people. However, they are not reliable. The CIA tested MDMA in dogs back when they were looking for a truth serum, but it never made it to human trials. Personally, you can torture me with all the MDMA you want, and add sodium pentothal on the comedown, but I doubt you will get anything out of me.
Posts: 1364 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
The story says he refuses to talk and has requested a lawyer, and will probably be appointed one at a hearing on Tuesday. If there is potentially a child's life in the balance, why wouldn't they find a way to speed up the proceedure and get him a lawyer now, in hopes that the lawyer could convince him to help? I know it's a long shot, but still...
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I don't know, but my understanding is that the police have "good reason" to think he's dead. Probably the girl's testimony. And if that's the case, they want to make sure they convict him.
I'd still have a lawyer appointed for him already, though. You're right that there's still a chance and they ought to sieze it. But I'm betting they're convinced he's dead. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:I, personally, would have no problem torturing the guy.
quote: It strains logic to give him a presumption of innocence.
I guess the question is one of trust not just in this government, but every government official involved, and every government official from this time forward. That's really what's at issue here. Arguing from a presumption of completely honorable action on the part of all in law enforcement and the courts, I can see how the ENEMY (criminals) could be viewed as justifiably getting whatever treatment they get. Afterall, the people doing the questioning are honorable.
But...these laws were put in place precisely because those in charge are not always honorable. If it were merely a matter of historical precedent, we'd still have reason enough not to place the power to torture in the hands of those who govern.
But we have modern-day examples of people in power not just ignoring the rights of the accused, but actively fabricating evidence, etc.
Take the case in question. We have a known pedophile in the company of a child abducted from the scene of a brutal multiple murder. And we have physical evidence suggesting that her brother was in the guy's car and is now probably dead (presumably, they found a lot of blood).
I will remind you that this is NOT the same as being caught in the act. It is strong evidence of his being involved in the crime and of knowing the whereabouts of that other child. But it is not an eye-witness account of his having committed the murders or the abductions. At worst, so far, you got him dead-to-rights on a violation of whatever parole agreement he's under. He is probably barred from being in the company of minors, so he's going back to jail already. Also, once a person is in custody, they are not an immediate threat to the community, so physical harm to them is unwarranted, no matter how much you may hate the person.
I think the law needs to be adhered to in these obvious and aggregious cases so that we can be sure it is in operation in the normal cases.
And, seriously, a system that puts implicit trust in the unobserved actions of government is just not sensible.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Note that I never said he doesn't deserve a legal presumption of innocence. But if he's actually innocent, he can act innocent, with the advice of counsel, and tell what he knows.
I'm torn in a case like this. Torture is very wrong, and frequently ineffective. Is it worth using it on the chance of finding a child alive?
I honestly don't know.
But in extremis, my doubts evaporate. In a case similar to the show 24, where good information exists that a nuclear bomb is at an unknown location and near it's detonation time, with perhaps 1 million or more deaths--do whatever it takes, torture, blackmail, whatever. Saving a million people is worth violating a prisoner's right. But wouldn't that would be more an act of war than a legal matter, and be treated as such?
Then of course comes the punchline to the old joke:"Now that I know you're a whore, I'm just dickering with the price."
I of course have no moral calculus that could equitibly compare the potential harm avoided to the actual rights violated. And therein lies the problem, which the Bush administration is wrestling with now, though perhaps the fight is already fixed: how much death or damage potentially avoided justifies torture or near-torture?
When you cast aside the absolute provisions against torture, you're leaping down a slope made slippery with blood.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Yes, and people have free agency. The blood of the perpetrators' victims is NOT on our hands, for it was not our choices that murdered them. Our choices are what we're responsible for. If we start letting ourselves do heinous things in the name of some hoped-for future good, then how is that different from Stalin or Saddam or Hitler or anyone?
Torturers are damaged too, probably even more than those tortured. They're made into monsters. Have you considered that side of things?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Torturing one guy to save a city is worse than letting said city be vaporized? That's hardly prudent.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Worse? Well...that's a different question. We're asking, really, when it is okay to violate our own laws.
The real answer to that question ought to be "never." Especially if one is arguing hypotheticals and seeking to use extreme cases to justify breaking our laws.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Of course it's an extreme hypothetical. But extreme acts of terrorism happen. And they could get worse than 9/11. Which is more important: an absolute law or saving lives?
The problem I have with the Bush administration is they seem to have a very casual attitude towards terrorismedit:of course, I meant to write torture there /edit, aggressively seeking to re-define it and when it's fine to use, even for hazily-defined reasons.
I guess I am straddling the fence on this issue: not willing to endorse the absolutism of "no torture ever, under any circumstances", nor willing to redefine torture as narrowly as possible and decriminalize it in pursuit of vague national security goals as the Bush administration has done.
quote:We're asking, really, when it is okay to violate our own laws.
The real answer to that question ought to be "never." Especially if one is arguing hypotheticals and seeking to use extreme cases to justify breaking our laws.
But our laws contain within them the concept of justification (edit: this should be necessity, not justification). It's what allows you to shoot someone in self-defense or to drive someone to the hospital when your license is suspended.
Sure, maybe we don't consider the "city about to be vaporized" scenario to be justification for torture. But it's not a complete analysis to say we should "never" violate our own laws, therefore we should never torture.
posted
Just to provide a legal framework if you wish to discuss it from that perspective. Here's the traditional common law elements of necessity (I used the wrong word - justification is something a little different):
a. Committing one crime to avoid a greater harm (usually impersonal - a harm to a third party). b. Clear and imminent danger. c. Reasonably expect unlawful act would be effective in abating danger. d. No effective legal way to avert the harm. e. Harm caused must be less than harm to be averted. f. Can’t be clear legislative statement about which evil to avoid. g. Defendant (in this case, the official committing the torture, not the suspect) did not place himself in this situation.
c, d, and e are the ones that would be at issue in both the city-vaporization and the missing child scenarios, I think. b is at issue in the current allegations against the U.S. with our foreign detainees, but I don't think anyone here is defending that.
I readily grant that an act that is defensible using necessity is not necessarily moral, so I don't pretend this answers the question. But it can provide some guidance into whether or not it would be illegal.
If the government official aspect is a hangup (and that might invoke f), imagine the parent got hold of the guy somehow and was trying to decide.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
For that matter, murder is against the law, yet we sanction state killing, retail via execution of criminals and wholesale in war.
Aren't war and execution worse than torture? Playing devil's advocate (which my posts here have been, to some extent, exploring my morals and others' to understand them), can you be hawkish on war or pro-death penalty but absolutely against torture, without moral contradiction?
I am against the death penalty, BTW. Not because it's never deserved, it's often richly deserved, but because it's unfairly administered and so is unjust.
Outside of extreme scenarios, I feel the same way about torture: the state would misuse such power as a matter of course, and so should be barred from it.
posted
I'd just like to take a moment to recommend the film The Battle of Algiers.
Very real, very direct examination by a French filmmaker of his own country's torture practices. There was only one professional actor on the cast, too - the Algerians were all actually survivors of the war.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Looking at the list, I'm of the opinion that when weighing torture against the harm sought to be prevented, the harm of the torture is much greater if it's given official sanction than if it's done by a distraught parent, mainly for the reasons Bob articulated above.
I can see my actual position being that the necessity framework might excuse a citizen if all the elements were met but might never excuse the government. I'm still not sure on the nuclear bomb hypo, though. Seems to me that imminent danger of 1 million deaths is a pretty serious harm to weigh against the consequences.
quote:If the government official aspect is a hangup (and that might invoke f), imagine the parent got hold of the guy somehow and was trying to decide.
.... I think the government sanction of torture is the hang up. Hence the "government sanctioned torture"
In the event of the extreme examples that have been discussed, I think it's up to the individuals on the scene to make the call. If there was a bomb about to explode and a cop had one of the bombers in custody then I would expect that cop to decide what he needed to do in that instance and be able to defend himself using the principles Dag described.
Having the state justify using torture in certain circumstances provides too large a blanket for excesses to hide under. It removes the onus to justify having taken what is most definitely an extreme measure.
edit: clearly I type slower than Dag
Posts: 251 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: Having the state justify using torture in certain circumstances provides too large a blanket for excesses to hide under. It removes the onus to justify having taken what is most definitely an extreme measure.
This makes sense. But should all of the moral burden be placed on a cop(s) shoulders?
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:This makes sense. But should all of the moral burden be placed on a cop(s) shoulders?
I think that in the end, everyone has to carry the moral burden for their own actions. State sanction or no. (think nazi germany)
Posts: 251 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
"No torture" is a very plain principle, and even that is vulnerable: police use sleep deprivation and psychological techniques (at Mt. Carmel they broadcast the screams of dying animals in the middle of the night -- presumably a way of making the Branch Davidians more calm and reasonable so they wouldn't do anything stupid), as well as the classic modern torture method, electric shock. If we allow "not too severe" torture, we'll get the most extreme agonies science can develop, and the defense "I don't think that's too severe" will work fine, provided it comes from a judge.
Given what judges think "interstate commerce" and "no law" means . . . let's not give them any ideas.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I might even hope that someone would take the suspect out back and beat the answers out of him, but if you try to set up a rule that actually allows that (rather than examines the act after the fact), I think you're asking for trouble.
It's how we get things like Abu Ghraib, IMHO. Someone in some official capacity says "it's okay" and everyone just assumes that it must be okay, 'cuz he should know. And why would he lie?
Imagine how much worse it would be if the law actually included provisions for torture.
Dag...I've never heard this justification thing before. Is that a federal law or a precedent that applies in all states, or what? I thought states had specific laws regarding self-defense, not a blanket "principle" that then has to be proven in every case.
posted
Those are the elements of the defense as it developed at common law (i.e., judge-made decisions). It's been codified in substantially similar form in many model penal code states.
It's not the same as self-defense, by the way, although self defense could be considered a special case of necessity. Most states have codified many aspects of self defense and necessity over the years, usually to state that specific facts patterns do or do not meet the requirements.
For example, in many states you can use deadly force against an intruder in the home even if you could retreat. This could be viewed as an attempt to state that the harm of being forced to leave ones house is greater than the harm of shooting an intruder (element e).
The NY law at the time of the Goetz subway shooting stated that deadly force could be used to stop a robbery, even if other means of escape exist. This is a similar example.
The law of necessity in any state will be a hodgepodge of statutes and court decisions. Judges can exercise a lot of control, mainly through jury instructions and appellate decisions about jury instructions.
One thing to remember is that defendant-friendly jury instructions are not appealable by the prosecution, so there's a kind of ratcheting effect on appeals. Far more instructions that hurt the defense are reviewed than instructions that hurt the prosecution.
Edit: Missed the fed/state question. I'm not aware of any federal cases stating that a constitutional right to use deadly force to defend oneself exists, although I think I could make a decent case for it. Assuming there's no such right, then there each criminal jurisdiction (the 50 states plus the federal government) has its own rules on it.
quote: We need to find a way to make people talk without torture. There has to some type of drug that can make someone tell you want you want to know. Someone needs to spend some money researching what it is. A humane way to get the answers.
I only ran across one article on this and haven't seen it since, so I'm not sure if it really exists, but there is supposed to be a drug widely available in Columbia that's the ultimate hypnotic and, if I remember correctly, can be used almost directly from the plant. Prostitutes have smeared it on their breasts, other criminals have slipped it into drinks. Once the victim has ingested it and is under its effects, she does anything that's asked of her, and once the drug wears off, she remembers nothing.
Yes, it's a pretty horrifying drug.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Days before the children disappeared, a message appeared on a Web site that officials said Duncan maintained. It said: "My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die."
Ugh... disgusting. I don't like the idea of the government taking action... but sometimes the idea of a family/parent taking revenge is very nice.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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