Torture As A Tool Of The Constabulary...

[sandyRoe]

It wouldn't be used as a means of securing confessions as suspects would eventually confess to get it to stop. But in cases where there were strong grounds to believe that the suspect knew the location of a hidden body it might help loosen his tongue.
What would the drawbacks be, if any?

[emmie]

that he could lie like Ian Brady, to get a day out of prison, to go onto the Moors to show where the bodies are buried, but would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, and if he has lied, a wild goose chase, all for nothing

[sandyRoe]

If he lied the interrogators would start again and he'd know that.

[glasman]

I think, Sandy, that someone from your neck of the woods would recall the awful consequences of that sort of power being given to the police forces, and the devastation wreaked on innocent people accused by those subjected to torture - remember Aunt Annie's bomb factory?

[sandyRoe]

Indeed I do. I lived just around the corner from her home in Abyssinia St in Belfast.

[Svejk]

Abyssinia St in Belfast.?
Candidate for worst address in the UK.

[glasman]

LOL. When I Googled Abyssinia Street I found that there's also one in Leeds, Liverpool, and even Philadelphia.

[ummmm]

Guilford 4
Maguire 7
Birmingham 6

You really think torture might work?

[Svejk]

A detective lost his job, last year I think, for not following protocol when locating a murdered girl's body. No link but it was a taxi driver in the west country, murdered 2 girls.

[Canary42]

"Confessions" under torture are surely invalid. Not to mention barbaric. And who would validate ytour "strong grounds" - the killers of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes possibly ?

[Graham-W]

There must be improvements on Sodium Pentathol which would be more acceptable than any kind of torture.
Interrogation by chemical means seems more acceptable to me.

[sandyRoe]

I wasn't thinking of this to secure convictions but, rather, closure for the families of victims. Once the courts were satisfied that the accused was guilty, and he had been sentenced, but refused to reveal the location of the victim's body, he could be handed over to the interrogators. He wouldn't be able to use the location of the body as a bargaining chip at some later date.

[RATTER15]

The problem comes when they have wrongly convicted someone for murder, how much more would they have to suffer from the torturers when they could not give the required information.

I would be totally against it!!

[woofgang]

sandy surely you can't be serious?

[sandyRoe]

Woofgang, no, I'm not. :-)

[ummmm]

Guilford 4
Maguire 7
Birmingham 6

All innocent....

[Peter Pedant]

Oh for Chrissakes Sandy

My dear ould Pa used to say (2WW) that the Brits didnt beat up the prisoners to make the talk but the French did - if this man has information that will save one French life....

He also mentioned the propensity of the tortured to say whatever the questioner wanted to hear.

Wind forward to the Cyprus Spy Trial where the cypher clerk confessed not very freely to "splash parties" [men only] and that their controller was a N Viet madam.

Day 10 - the N Viet madam walks into court for the Defence and says arrest me for spying.... you cant because you dont have any evidence.

Case collapses - Lightowler (poss related to the L of Dunkirk and the L of Titanic or possibly not) appears on tel with tel Wogan and 'explains' why people make false confessions.

and the confessions ? figment of the interrogators fertile and dirty imaginations....

so sandy - good idea - let's learn all these lessons anew.

[Peter Pedant]

ummm - The Irish cases are better evidence for the proposition that there should be no confessions without corroborating evidence.

Aunt Annie - never confessed herself did she ?
The last time I saw In the Name of the Father - I cried...

[Peter Pedant]

no convictions without corroborating evidence - damn - sorry

[ummmm]

Makes me cry too, Peter, an horrendous miscarriage of justice.

If we had the death penalty, as quite a few ABers think we should, they's all be dead now.

A very interesting read is 'The stolen Years' by Paul Hill.

[ummmm]

*they'd

(I'm typing in the dark)