Meanwhile back on topic, consider the case of Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and LeRoy Orange. They were sentenced to death but later pardoned after it was revealed that their confessions were extracted through torture by a Chicago Police Commander.
Well, the Commander broke the law. Thus, they walked free…not as innocents, but as technicalities. For all we know they actually could have been guilty. Commander was an idiot.
How can torture be allowed – and then controlled to prevent its abuse in such a manner?
Judging by the UK administration, it couldn’t!
Each case of torture “should” be based on the persons weaknesses, so limiting Torture to Water or sensory dep. wouldn’t work.

How can you be sure that the person you want vital information from actually has that information?
As per any investigation. You have other evidence which points you at it.

Can the judicial system be structured to allow the police the licence to use torture without it becoming routine?

No, it would become routine. The administration would be tough for a year, then everybody would lose interest, funding would be cut from the admin / procedures budget and the average woodentop would think it’s OK to burn the eyes of a suspect.

Perhaps these things are not more widely used to ensure control is kept and their use is not abused. And that is one reason why torture should not be condoned.

Torture is of course also mental cruelty. Some investigating officers are extremely good at “twisting the melon” of a suspect…without leading the questions. At what point is torture a torture?

All I feel, is that if the Police or MI5 / 6 capture somebody that is possibly holding info on a terror attack, they need to get that info as rapidly as possible. Such people have usually been suspects for years, and been observed/noted etc. If the professionals believe that torture is the best way, I am (At the moment) on their side. But only on Terrorism / War stuff, not the local coppers sorting out a drug-drop.

Allan

In the text, in Bold for clarity.

No, the Kansas audit was based on the costs of the total process, from arrest to conclusion of the punishment.

In California $137m is spent a year on cases involving the death penalty. If life without parole sentences were used instead, costs would drop to $11.5 million a year – including time spent in prison. Allan

Well, I trawled through that pdf. Those costs are based on Californy system which is basically so dysfunctional, it totally fecked. 670 inmates on Death row, waiting for an average of 17.25 years, with a span of 12 to 20 years. FFS.
The $137m covers the whole cost of the litigation and appeals of all 670 of them. Plus the whole costs of mis-managing the system, and the backlog.

The £11.5M is based on keeping “Lifers without parole” in a secure unit which is not high security “Lock down”. An ordinary prison it seems. This does not work, as these lifers (Knowing that they are never to be let out and can never be given the death penalty) need the highest security available. They aim for jail credence by killing a guard, especially a female guard. They have absolutely nothing to lose.
I know for a fact that UK costs (Disregarding lawyers) of secure imprisonment is between £2,000 and £2,500 per week per inmate. About £4m for a 35 year stretch at present year EC’s. Californy reckons they could halve death row by reducing the “Qualification” of the death penalty. Leaving 378 IIRC on lifer status. That bill in itself is £1.5Bn….or $3Bn ish.

It’s not a man thing at all. I don’t know what I’d call it but it’s definitely not a man thing.

To get back to the topic the answer for me would have to be yes, I can definitely see situations in which torture can be a useful tool but there are many forms of torture. Perhaps the one most guaranteed of success is the psychological terror of harm coming to one’s family unless you reveal what the torturer wants to know.

As for old shape and his turning Iran to glass. Perhaps he knows of a nuclear weapon which would discriminate between the hard line regime and its supporters and the estimated 2 million on the streets of Tehran yesterday asking for democracy? Or perhaps, as he’s so fond of the human rights of killers he’d give Iran the 24 month grace while an investigation is carried out into the estimated 120,000 State sponsored killings in the last twelve months.

Regards,

kev35

Well, I can limit to a single grid-square with small devices. And we know which squares the regime lives and works in.

Oh, haven’t you? 🙂

I stand totaly corrected on that one.

It was a time I was brokering a deal on some really sexy kit which could be used on such an event. I was perhaps offset with a tad of jingoism.

Says the man who wants to bring back public executions, nuke Iran and bomb China…. :rolleyes:

I really can’t take you seriously on this particular subject, old shape.

I think you’re on a wind-up, quite frankly.

And have you been up all night, Paul? 🙂

Let me clarify here,
Nuke Iran, well, Israel will do it if they step over the mark. Iran is supplying the enemy of Israel. One really doesn’t want to do that. Iran has also probably squirelled away Iraq’s ex arsenal.

I have never said Bomb China…I do wish they would stop exporting tools and equipment that are 100% garbage but it’s no reason to bomb them. What I did say was that when the West finally decides to sort out North Korea, China is duty bound to join in…on the wrong side. Then we’ll have a major war.

It is not a debate – it seems more like a personal statement of extreme views. The debate was, at one point, an interesting one about torture. This one about the death penalty impinges itself on threads here regularly.

I wouldn’t do it. And I’m grateful that the soldiers who found Saddam Hussein were well trained and morally grounded enough to bring him back to justice rather than indulging in their own vigilante action. This, Old Shape, is where you seem to have the problem, accepting that there is something to be gained from looking through another man’s eyes.

One quick point to answer the issue that has been raised about the costs of keeping people locked up for life.
– In 2003 in Kansas an audit found it cost 70% more to use the death penalty because of high legal costs (Ave $1.26m against $740,000 cost of incareration)
– In 2004 in Tenessee death penalty trials cost 48% more than equivalent trials seeking life imprisonment.
– In 2008 in Maryland death penalty cases cost three times as much.

Allan

Allan, you are quoting the costs of the Court case, and yes that would be more expensive for one with potential death at the end of it. I know for a fact how much it costs to keep people in a Secure unit / Prison in the UK. My wife assists in banging people into them.

There is of course the point that we all knew Saddo would be hung when caught. If he had a gun instead of being in his underpants, he may have been shot.

“Mr Lawless and another man were convicted of firebombing Mr Wilkins’s flat after wrongly suspecting him of being a paedophile.”

Not sure even Old Shape’s rules of crime and punishment would sort that one out! :rolleyes:

No no and thrice no. I KEEP repeating, my system is the proper western judicicial one, with a 24 month appeal period. I do not believe in vigilante actions.