A hypothetical
Take 100 politically- and baseball-inclined people.
Ask them the following two questions:
(For those not baseball-inclined, the evidence provided in the Mitchell Report was provided after threat of jail time.)
Ask them the following two questions:
- Does torture work?
- Do you believe the evidence provided in the Mitchell Report?
(For those not baseball-inclined, the evidence provided in the Mitchell Report was provided after threat of jail time.)
posted by elanit | 6:52 PM
2 Comments:
I haven't read the Mitchell report (and am unlikely to do so, as Baseball for me is a good lawn spoiled).
Anyway, coercion certainly works: police get lots and lots of folks to testify against other criminals using the threat of jail time and reward of less.
Torture "works" in that most people subjected to it will start talking. However, a tremendous amount of doubt should be associated with any information learned thus, because people do tend to say whatever they have to to get out of harm's way.
This misses the question of "Assuming that torture always produced accurate information, would it be moral to torture suspected/known evildoers to discern their future plans for evil?" The answers to that question are intriguing, and I've seen some thoughtful people answer it differently.
Stinkin Frog. I blame him for this.
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