The description of the use of
judicial torture inflicted on the culprit, Possenti, is not for the fainthearted.
"Picton's governorship of Trinidad was authoritarian and brutal and led to his trial at the King's Bench in 1806 accused of ordering the
judicial torture of Louisa Calderon.
Particularly gritty chapters look at the use of
judicial torture by police to extract confessions, the demand for money by judges to ensure outcomes, and the recruitment of criminal gangs to help police demonstrations.
Chapter 5 deals with the power of the sovereign and focuses on the police and their use of "
judicial torture".
Other trends, institutions and practices that used to make our world a dangerous and wretched place are gone or disappearing, as well: slavery, despotism, dueling,
judicial torture, state-sanctioned cruel punishment, human sacrifice and cannibalism, and even widespread and arbitrary cruelty to animals.
In fact, the lesson of the Algerian War, and of the Bush government's experiment with the same sort of policies, is one that should be obvious and gratifying to any conservative: the traditional absolute ban on
judicial torture is wiser than we can know.
By the late 1700s, she argues, a new concept of selfhood had led to a broader understanding of human rights and a condemnation of
judicial torture: A prisoner's body was private and could no longer be broken in order to teach society a lesson.
Judicial torture was not a punishment, but a means of eliciting the truth.
In subsequent centuries, many of Europe's finest legal minds devoted themselves to codifying, regularizing and justifying the use of
judicial torture. Even in England, where torture did not have a place in the regular judicial process, frequent use of the gibbet and whipping-post and death sentences that included disembowelling and quartering or, for women, burning at the stake (for high or petty treason) put the body's pains at the center of a public spectacle of retribution.
The primary reason, he theorized, was the abandonment of
judicial torture, which under sultanic law (Tk.
Since
judicial torture was illegal in Sweden, it occurred infrequently within the Gota Court's jurisdiction (58); however, the equally illegal water ordeal was employed in the 1669-72 panic and even afterwards against accused witches (56-57).
From that restricted, distanced position occupied by Pilate, Annas, and Caiaphas, our audience could see justice 'be seen to be done', while the majority of our players moved among the crowd, ordering them about and carrying out the cruel action of
judicial torture literally in their midst.