How the system of evidence worked
In continental law, a formal rule applied: the testimony of two eyewitnesses or the defendant's own confession counted as full proof. Circumstantial evidence, no matter how convincing, did not provide full proof.
That created a dead end. If there were no eyewitnesses but the evidence pointed to someone, the court could neither convict nor release them. A confession became the only way out of the procedure, and the same procedure provided a way to obtain one.
Torture did not arise from a desire to cause suffering but from the requirement to obtain a confession at any cost. The horror was a consequence of the rule about evidence.
Why it did not work
The last point explains the mass trials. Each confession required accomplices, and everyone named went through the same procedure and named others. The system was designed to confirm its own theory, no matter how many people were drawn into it.
How this was abandoned
The change came with a shift in the rules of evidence. When courts gained the right to assess the body of evidence according to their own conviction, rather than count formal units of proof, the need for a confession at any cost disappeared.
The same logic underlies the modern ban. It rests not only on humanity: statements obtained under pressure are considered unreliable and therefore have no legal force, regardless of what they say.
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Sources
- The formal theory of evidence, with a special role for confessions, operated in continental law until the end of the 18th century
- the abandonment of torture went hand in hand with the transition to the court's free evaluation of evidence