Torture Techniques
Throughout every period in history, people in society have been driven by panic and hysteria to use their faith in God as a reason to accuse, torture, and murder countless innocent people. Events in this cycle of inhumanity account for some of the darkest stains in human history. All forms of torture and punishment served as the primary means of forcing accused, inocent individuals to confess their involvement in the alleged occurrences and to reveal the names of accomplices. Throughout history, various forms of spiritual rituals, public humiliation, and pain induction, have been used to extract these false confessions from innocent individuals.
Accused heretics could be punished through spiritual purification rituals performed by the church. After being accused of being a heretic, the church considered the body and soul of that individual to be corrupted, filthy, and possessed by the deviled. Because of this, the accused would have to undergo a harsh cleansing of the body and soul. The body would be washed with fire, boiling water, and rags made from harsh material. To cleanse the soul of the individual, he or she would be forced to swallow substances meant to eliminate evil spirits. The church accomplished this by forcing the accused to swallow scalding water, fire brands, coals, and soaps. This ritual evolved into the present day concept of washing the mouth out with soap.1
Severe public humiliation was another method of extracting confessions out of accused individuals. The most common and recognizable form of public humiliation was the stocks or pillories. With the head and hands fixed in the stocks, the accused was put on display for the entire village to jest, insult, and throw things at. Many ...
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Kassin, Saul M. (1997). “The psychology of confession evidence.” American Psychologist 52 (1997): 221-233. Web. 8 January 2014.
Bercher's writing goes back to the core idea of "They Say, I Say". He starts
Hence, Beli and Oscar both experience physical torture in the cane fields. Elaine Scarry's "The Structure of Torture" describes how the act of torture effects an individual. Both Beli and Oscar experience varying effects of torture, which both reinforces and subtracts from the claims made Scarry's excerpt. To put it briefly, Beli and Oscar's deaths are in one way or another caused by torture; and in a broader sense; caused by love. As Marcel Proust once said: "love is a reciprocal
The Book of Execution: An Encyclopedia of Methods of Judicial Execution by Geoffrey Abbott Reprint edition (August 1995) Trafalgar Square
The early Christians were thrown to the lions. Also, we don't know whether it's based in reality or not, but check out the scene in the movie The Vikings where they throw Ragnar into the wolf pit.
... court, there are only two choices for their fate: confess to a false crime and spend time in jail for it, or don't confess and face either torture until you confess or your execution. It is a lose lose situation. This is true for every person who is tried in front of the court. People became fearful of this and they could do nothing but accuse everyone they can in order to prevent accusation of themselves.
One of the key aspects that may have led to the initial stages of the trials and ultimate spiral out of control is the religious context of Ne...
Travelling around the world, this paper presents the various religious perspectives evidenced in recent actions taken regarding the death penalty.
Beginning in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, the nature of punishment began to change. Slowly, the spectacle of justice which accompanied the public executions and torture of the Middle Ages began to recede farther and farther away from the public into the fringes of society as the institution of the prison began to take shape. Hidden by both distance and structure, the large stone/concrete walls and small windows kept the real...
Zacharia, Sophie1. "Death By Stoning: The Uncertain Fate Of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani." Amicus Journal 26 (2011): 21-24. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 22 Mar. 2014.
Public Shaming is defined as a judicial punishment imposed on a convicted criminal that includes humiliation in public instead of imprisonment. In Nathaniel Hawthorne 's novel The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans use public humiliation to punish those for their sins. Public humiliation may seem like the best punishment; however, in the novel Dimmesdale seems to suffer more from his own mind than Hester does by being put into public humiliation. Today, judges are still using public shaming as punishment for moderate and intense crimes. Judges believe that public humiliation can cause a greater change in a person than just sending them to jail; however, this is not a fact. Public humiliation should not still be used as a form of punishment for crime.
Around the world and around the clock, human rights violations seem to never cease. In particular, torture violations are still rampant all over the world. One regime, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, establishes a strong elaboration of norms against torture. Despite its efforts, many countries still outright reject its policies against torture while other countries openly accept them, but surreptitiously still violate them. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia all have failed to end torture despite accepting the provisions of the Convention.
These week readings, especially the child abuse and Reporting one brought back the tortures and trauma of my elementary school years. The beatings that were unleashed to us by our teachers, and especially one head teacher still disturb me. He would tell you to bent and touch your toe and then he whips your bat as if you had no feeling. I just realized how traumatizing that was that over thirty years down the line, I could still feel remember. I remember some of the students cutting their mattresses and sawing it inside their pants to minimize the pain. Elementary school for us was like concentration camps. This was not for disciplinary motive but criminal. Looking at it now in the light of Gonzales case, I realize this was purely torture.
Torture is the process of inflicting pain upon other people in order to force them to say something against their own will. The word “torture” comes from the Latin word “torquere,” which means to twist. Torture can not only be psychologically but mentally painful. Before the Enlightenment, it was perfectly legal to torture individuals but nowadays, it is illegal to torture anyone under any circumstances. In this essay, I will demonstrate why torture should never acceptable, not matter the condition.
Through history we understand that a confession was treated as a conviction. The use of physical torture was very rampant and was used as a means to extract confessions, and at that time all confessions were routinely admitted into evidence without question. However, gradually over the centuries, the status of confessions in the legal system shifted from the courts’ limiting the acceptability into evidence of ordinary confessions in the mid-1700s, to totally excluding compelled confessions by the mid to late 1800s. The main purpose of this essay is to examine and understand why innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. This essay will also be looking into factors that coerce innocent suspects to give false statements and confess to crimes they did not commit during police interroga...