Torture and Confessions in Jewish Law

In the American legal system, as in the Israeli, the confessions of perpetrators tend to be preferred as evidence of crimes. Among the problems with this approach is the danger that confessions might be coerced. By contrast, the Talmud states that a person’s testimony against himself is ipso facto inadmissible, thus avoiding the problem of coercion. However, writes Shlomo Brody, rabbinic jurisprudence provides ample exceptions: