Torture

n. Corporal suffering, inflicted to extort confession from suspected criminals, or in the indulgence of cruel and malevolent motives. The vpord recurs in the history of jurisprudence, denoting pain inflicted on persons by authority now obsolete; also in statutes of modern introduction, relative to prevention of cruelty to animals. The verb "to torture" is seldom met in connection with the first-mentioned meaning, but it is found in the statutes prohibiting cruelty. The torture, in legal history, signifies the rack, or question, or other mode of examination by violence to the person, to extort a confession from supposed criminals, and a revelation of their associates. It is distinguishable from punishment, which usually succeeds a conviction for ofiences; while the torture was inflicted as a part of the introductory process leading to trial and judgment. Though probably disallowed by the earlier common law, the rack was occasionally used, in England, as a police measure for compelling confessions, but Wharton says that it was used in judicial proceedings only once in the reign of Elizabeth, its last infliction having ingham, by Pelton, the proposal was made in the privy council to put the assassin to the rack to discover his accomplices, the judges declared that no such proceeding was allowable. It is wholly contrary to the criminal law as administered in America. In statutes to protect animals from cruelty, " tortm-e " seems used as interchangeable with abuse, cruelty, illtreatment, and the like. Thus, as an example, a statute of New York (1 Laws 1867, 884, cl. 375), the principle of which has been enacted in some other states, provides, that if any person shall overdrive, overload, torture, torment, deprive of necessary sustenance, or unnecessarily or cruelly beat, or needlessly mutilate or kill, any living creature, such offender shall be guilty of a misdemeanor; and a subsequent act (Laws, 1874, oh. 12) declares, that the word " torture, "" torment," or " cruelty " shall be held to include every act, omission, or neglect whereby imjustifiable physical pain, suffering, or death is caused or permitted. The earlier but somewhat narrower English statute (12 & 13 Vict. ch. 92, § 2) enacts, that if any person shall cruelly beat, ill-treat, overdrive, abuse, or torture, &c., any animal, he shall be subject to a penalty. Few decisions have been noticed turning particularly upon the force of the word torture in these enactments.

In Budge V. Parsons, 3 Beat §• S. 382; 7 Law J. N. 8. 624; 9 Jur. N. s.

796, it was held that a person who set a fighting-cock to fight another after the other had been disabled, by its thigh being broken, committed an ofience under the English act; but the opinions do not show that any question was made as to which of the vrords used in the act to define the punishable cruelty was the one applicable: the question chiefly discussed was whether a fighting-cock was to be deemed an animal, within the protection of the statute. In Bates ».

Mc Cormick, 9 Law T. Rep. sr. s.

175, 12 Irish Com. L. 577, the point was made and decided that setting cocks to fight one another was an offence, within der a statute punishing ' ' every person who shall maliciously and cruelly maim, beat, or torture any horse, &c., — the court held that an indictment charging that defendant did unlawfully, maliciously, and cruelly torture horses, by tying brush and boards to their tails, was too loose and vague. The torture was charged to consist merely in tying brash and boards to the tails of the animals. This act, though very reprehensible, might have been done without producing any torture. If the circumstances attending and consequences produced by the act were such as to produce pain or torture, they should have been averred. In such an indictment, the means of producing the torture must be alleged, so that the court can see that such means have the inevitable and natural tendency to produce the effect in which the crime consists. Torture is pain, anguish, extreme pain or anguish of body or mind, pang, agony, torment. Torture, then, in the statute, must consist in $ome violent, wanton, and cruel act necessarily producing pain and suffering to the animal. The acts described in this indictment might or might not produce extreme pain; the mere act of tying described is not necessarily torture.