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Edited on Fri Jul-14-06 11:40 AM by Rabrrrrrr
I was watching an episode of Boston Legal last night from the first season - an episode in which the lawyers are defending a policeman who beat up a guy to get information from him about where a kidnapper - the beat up guy's brother - might be so that a young boy child who was kidnapped could be rescued. The policeman was on trial for said beating up of the guy - broke his arm, and did some other kind of damage. Nothing life threatening, but still, he beat him up.
During the trial, the issue was raised that in cases of missing/kidnapped children, police stastistically have two days to find the child. If not found within two days, then a child is almost never found, ever.
The guy who did the kidnapping was also known to have kidnapped (and most likely murdered) another child.
The policeman knew that the kidnapper had stayed with his brother, at least for a few hours, so they went to the brother's place to find out where the kidnapper went. The man wouldn't tell the cops, so the one cop beat him to get the information from him; the guy talked, the cops found the kidnapper, and rescued the boy.
The policeman also knew that it was against the law to beat someone up (they even used the word torture in the show) to get information.
So here's the dilemma - knowing all the above, was the policeman ethically correct (even if clearly legally incorrect) in beating the guy as part of finding the kidnapped boy?
The character Alan Shore gave an absolutely stunning summation which, if I can find it online, I will post in this thread - he swayed the jury to vote "not guilty". A brilliant piece of writing his speech was.
After hearing his summation, and the details of the case, I would have voted "not guilty" as well.
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