The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

two, and the execution of the convicted. 37 From 1648 (the first execution for witchcraft in New
England) until 1663, witchcraft trials had led to 15 executions: from 1663 to 1688, not a single person
was executed for witchcraft. (Hansen, p. 4) The Salem trials accused and killed a larger number of
individuals in a far shorter amount of time – estimates of the number of accused (whether brought to
trial or not) vary from a conservative 148 (Boyer and Nissenbaum) to over 200 (Hall). Why did the
trials in Salem result in so many executions when prior trials had not been characterized by this cycle
of denunciation and confession? For if we are to argue that the Salem trials were a result of
maintaining Puritan values in an uncertain world, or efforts to keep women under social control, or
mass hysteria, then we are confronted with the fact that these earlier episodes of witchcraft did not
explode into mass denunciation, Puritan values and gender control notwithstanding.
In fact, the trials at Salem resembled not other outbreaks of witchcraft in New England, but the
great witch trials of Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland (Golden). The 1500s had seen fears of
witchcraft reawaken across the European continent. While suspected witches were persecuted in many
states, the vast concentration appears to have been in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Scotland;
southern and Catholic states tended to have far less interest in witchcraft as a threat to social order, and
consequently there were far fewer executions in countries such as Spain, Portugal and the Italian
states. 38 All told, the European witch-trials took the lives of at least 50,000 souls. (Golden, p. 413) It is
important to note that torture was an integral part of this process, and that this emphasis on forced
confessions derived from the use of the Roman Law in these areas. Under this framework, capital
crimes could be punishable by death only where the authorities had one of the two following proofs:
two eye-witnesses, or a confession from the accused. That witchcraft involved evil acts committed
through the intercession of invisible devils meant that the witnesses were rarely found – instead, in
witchcraft as in other capital crimes, the authorities made frequent recourse to judicial torture as a
means of generating the necessary confessions. (Langbein 1978) Torture was used not simply as a
means of generating confessions, but critically to discover accomplices: witchcraft was understood not
37 Witchcraft in New England was not a religious crime, punishable by the Church, but rather a secular crime against God
and the King, punishable by execution. To be a witch was to be a rebel against all authority – and so a traitor to the
crown whose authority depended on divine sanction. Consequently, those confessing to witchcraft could not be
reincorporated into the community, but would be certain to die, both under the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties,
and under English Crown law after the revocation of the that charter in 1684. (Roach, p.xxiii; Boyer & Nissenbaum, p.
6)
38 An interesting exception to this general rule is Poland: witches were persecuted in large numbers, and persecuted later
than in the West: whereas the fervor for killing witches had subsided by the 1700s, in Poland the activity was reaching
its height at this time.
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