SUGGESTIVE INTERROGATIONS—DEPOSITIONS.
Our laws prohibit _suggestive_ (leading) questions in a lawsuit:
those, that is (according to the doctors of law), which, instead of
applying, as they should do, to the _genus_ in the circumstances of
a crime, refer to the _species_; those, in other words, which from
their immediate connection with a crime suggest to the accused a direct
answer. Questions, according to the criminal lawyers, ought, so to speak,
‘to envelop the main fact spirally and never to attack it in a direct
line.’ The reasons for this method are, either that an answer may not
be _suggested_ to the accused which may place him face to face with
the charge against him, or perhaps because it seems unnatural for him
directly to criminate himself. But, whichever of these reasons it may be,
the contradiction is remarkable between the existence of such a custom
and the legal authorisation of torture; for what interrogatory can be
more _suggestive_ than pain? The former reason applies to the question of
torture, because pain will _suggest_ to a strong man obstinate silence,
in order that he may exchange the greater penalty for the lesser, whilst
it will _suggest_ to a weak man confession, in order that he may escape
from present torment, which has more influence over him than pain which
is to come. The other reason evidently applies too, for if a _special_
question leads a man to confess against natural right, the agonies of
torture will more easily do the same. But men are more governed by the
difference of names than by that of things.
Finally, a man who, when examined, persists in an obstinate refusal to
answer, deserves a punishment fixed by the laws, and one of the heaviest
they can inflict, that men may not in this way escape the necessary
example they owe to the public. But this punishment is not necessary when
it is beyond all doubt that such a person has committed such a crime,
questions being useless, in the same way that confession is, when other
proofs sufficiently demonstrate guilt And this last case is the most
usual, for experience proves that in the majority of trials the accused
are wont to plead ‘Not guilty.’