Torture and lawyers with guilty clients

            I don’t see how one could claim that torture is never permissible.  If we knew that a mad scientist had placed a bomb in the core of the Earth that would destroy all mankind and the only way to figure out how to defuse the bomb is to torture the scientist, I think it would be clear to anyone that the scientist should be tortured.  On the other hand, if I really wanted a Twinkie and I had no money to buy one, it would probably not be ideal for me to torture the owner of a supermarket in order to obtain one.  So somewhere in between those extremes must be a point at which torture becomes permissible or impermissible.

            However, I think it is also clear that torture is so inherently evil (if that is the right word to use) that we should have a very strong stance against it.

            In a way, this issue and the worries I have about it seem similar to the issue and worries that surround the duty of the lawyer to defend his client even if he knows the client is guilty.  Although there may be cases where the lawyer could easily turn in a guilty client and see a clear benefit, the broader negative implications of simply allowing lawyers to renege on their duty as a lawyer are too great.  For example, the breakdown of the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the accused is an enormously important consequence that must be considered.  Does this mean that lawyers should never ever turn in a guilty client?  I don’t think that such an absolute could ever be defensible.  But this does not mean that such cases should not be exceedingly rare.

            Similarly, I think torture is a tool that should almost never be used.  The potential for torture to be disproportionately used on people in a certain region or of a certain race seems quite high.  The use of torture on innocent people without a transparent process of showing why that person is being tortured also seems like a horrible potential consequence of being loose in our attitude towards torture.  The list goes on.  Does this mean that in specific cases that torture cannot save lives?  Of course not, just as a lawyer could turn in his guilty client and see a clear benefit of doing so.  However, the broader consequences of being apathetic or treating torture as a tool to be used lightly are greater than the benefits that are seen when considering specific cases on their own, just as the broader consequences of allowing lawyers to turn in their clients outweigh the case-by-case benefits.