I think torture should be illegal and I think the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used at Guantanamo are abhorrent. But I also think there are real-world sc

I think torture should be illegal and I think the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used at Guantanamo are abhorrent. But I also think there are real-world scenarios in which torture is not only moral, but where it would be immoral not to torture. This sounds absurd, but consider this real-life case given in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1]: A woman's car is stolen. Unknown to the thief, her child is sleeping in the back seat. The thief discovers the baby and ditches the car. The police soon catch him at a train station. CCTV footage shows him stealing the car. It's over 100ºF out. A police officer describes the incident: > In the police truck on the way to the police station: “Where did you leave the Hyundai?” Denial instead of dissimulation: “It wasn't me.” It was—property stolen from the car was found in his pockets. In the detectives' office: “It's been twenty minutes since you took the car—little tin box like that car—It will heat up like an oven under this sun. Another twenty minutes and the child's dead or brain damaged. Where did you dump the car?” Again: “It wasn't me.” > Appeals to decency, to reason, to self-interest: “It's not too late; tell us where you left the car and you will only be charged with Take-and-Use. That's just a six month extension of your recognizance.” Threats: “If the child dies I will charge you with Manslaughter!” Sneering, defiant and belligerent; he made no secret of his contempt for the police. Part-way through his umpteenth, “It wasn't me”, a questioner clipped him across the ear as if he were a child, an insult calculated to bring the Islander to his feet to fight, there a body-punch elicited a roar of pain, but he fought back until he lapsed into semi-consciousness under a rain of blows. He quite enjoyed handing out a bit of biffo, but now, kneeling on hands and knees in his own urine, in pain he had never known, he finally realised the beating would go on until he told the police where he had abandoned the child and the car. > The police officers' statements in the prosecution brief made no mention of the beating; the location of the stolen vehicle and the infant inside it was portrayed as having been volunteered by the defendant. The defendant's counsel availed himself of this falsehood in his plea in mitigation. When found, the stolen child was dehydrated, too weak to cry; there were ice packs and dehydration in the casualty ward but no long-time prognosis on brain damage. As much as we may wish otherwise, the answers to moral questions aren't always simple. Every time I've related this story, it has convinced my interlocutor that torture can sometimes be moral. Again, that doesn't mean it should be legal or systematized. To make an analogy with less emotional weight: theft and trespassing are illegal, but they're sometimes right. One might trespass to get someone to a hospital more quickly. Or one might steal something so it can be used for some life-saving measure. People accept these rare, one-off situations. So too it should be with torture. 1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/#CasStuBea http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/#CasStuBea