Yeah but for all we know, they didn't commit those crimes either. I mean, they, "confessed", to a lot right. There were "witnesses", to them doing a lot right.

Yeah but for all we know, they didn't commit those crimes either. I mean, they, "confessed", to a lot right. There were "witnesses", to them doing a lot right. They may have done all of what they confessed to, or they may have been tortured and done none of it. That's the problem with bent police forces and court systems, there's just a baseline confidence issue. That baseline confidence issue creates the conditions that make people perfectly justified in being skeptical. And winning that confidence back is extremely difficult. In fact, depending on how bad the conditions are, it may not even be possible. When torture is allowed into the judicial process either overtly or covertly, the integrity of the entire system eventually degrades over time. EDIT: On re-reading that, it sounded bad. I didn't mean that they might have been tortured. I understand that torture was part of the process. So perhaps I should have written: "...or they may have done none of it, and the torture prompted confessions..."