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

crowd was deeply and troublingly moved by Burroughs' final moments, when he not only moved the
witnesses to weeping with his words, but recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly – an act he should have
been incapable of as a witch according to the folk traditions that most people held regarding witchcraft.
In this case, the elite view of witchcraft actually ended up being more exacting than folk tradition –
Mather had to mount his horse to calm the near riotous crowd by reminding them that the Devil can
appear even as an angel of Light. (ibid. p. 243) The hangings proceeded, and the bodies were buried,
but public opinion had begun to turn against the trials – with so many outwardly virtuous persons being
executed without confessing, it was entirely too likely that the innocent were being condemned with the
guilty.
This turn away from the trials can be seen not only in the mob's reaction to execution, but also
in the Salem meeting house itself. When a vote was held on July 3 rd on whether or not to
excommunicate Rebecca Nurse, the motion was passed by unanimous consent – and this despite her
having relatives among the congregation who would have had every reason to believe her innocence. 53
When a similar motion to excommunicate Martha Corey was put forward on September 11 th , it passed
by only “general consent” - the Nurse's and Corey's and their allies in the Church had turned openly
against the trial, making plain their belief that innocent people had been killed. Moreover, this
opposition was not limited to the powerless. Around the 15 th of that month, Justice of the Peace for
Essex County (wherein Salem Village lay) Dudley Bradstreet began refusing to issue any new warrants
for the arrest of suspects. Within days, both he and his wife had been named by the afflicted as witches
– responsible for the deaths of nine people no less. The Bradstreets immediately fled the colony.
The final blow to the trials did not arrive until the beginning of October, however. Increase
Mather, President of Harvard University and father of Cotton, had been asked to write a pamphlet on
the use of spectral testimony (that is, the descriptions by the afflicted of the tormenting spirits of the
accused which were, of course, invisible to the magistrates) in the courtroom. While ministers around
the colony, as well as several judges, had had deep misgivings about the reliability of this evidence
from the start, these doubts had been overwhelmed by the freely given confessions of the accused
which not only convinced the elites of the fact of a witch conspiracy, but also matched the spectral
evidence given by the accused, validating it in the eyes of the authorities. 54 And yet spectral evidence
53 We may take the fact that they acquiesced in this decision to be an indication of how deep the fear of being accused went
at this point in time. (Roach, p. 191)
54 In actuality, of course, the confessions could hardly have done otherwise. Whenever an accused confessed, the afflicted
54