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

from execution for their crimes, but the execution would have to be deferred until all relevant
information had been brought out – and their testimony against their confederates given before the law.
And it was precisely this dynamic that placed those who refused to acknowledge guilt in such mortal
peril: with them, the trail had come to an end. Since they would not cooperate, their testimony had no
value, and so they were the first to be tried, and consequently the first to be executed. That going to
trial meant certain death can be seen most clearly in the case of Rebecca Nurse – visible Saint and
respected member of the community. She was the only suspect to be acquitted during the trials
themselves – but here the power of the afflicted over the proceedings nonetheless condemned her to
death. The afflicted immediately cried out after her exoneration that her spirit tormented them as
punishment for their testimony, leading the judges to send the jury back to reconsider their verdict.
This time, they came back with the 'correct' decision: Nurse would hang like the rest.
In other words, the only way to prevent being killed was to agree with the afflicted, and send
others to the noose – the magistrates would not be convinced of a person's innocence as long as they
believed that the afflicted suffered, and as long as other witches were confessing. Confession alone
was not enough – to buy time away from the hangman's noose meant throwing others to the galleys.
Perversely, the magistrates were unknowingly enforcing the cycle of deception. By September,
however, even the confessors were being brought to trial and sentenced to death. This shift in the
incentives began to break the cycle. Once it became clear that hanging would follow confession
anyway, with nothing but months in irons for a reward, suspects begin to recant. Previously,
individuals recanting would make no headway against a Court convinced of the reality of witchcraft, as
demonstrated by the case of Deliverance Hobbs. Hobbs had apparently tried to join the ranks of the
afflicted around the time that her daughter, Abigail, was held for trial, and in fact had denounced Mercy
Lewis (afflicted) and Sarah Wildes (the mother of constable Ephraim Wildes) before being arrested
herself. Under questioning on April 22 nd she at first denied the charges, but broke down under
questioning (and the wails of the afflicted) and confessed, naming Wildes, Goody Osborn, and
confirming the diabolical leadership of the “tall, dark man (…) wearing a high crowned hat” - the
figure who would later be identified by Abigail Williams as Rev. George Burroughs. (Roach, p. 90)
When Hobbs recanted she was interrogated in jail on May 3 rd : her spirit, which had ceased to torment
after her confession, had mysteriously begun to plague the afflicted again. When it had become clear
that that judges would not accept a version of events that did not include her signing the Devil's book,
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