THIRD DEGREE, originally an American slang or cant term, but now in common use in the United States and coming into such use in Great Britain, to designate the employment of brutal methods by police or prosecuting authorities to extort in formation or confessions from persons in custody. The phrase is believed to have been suggested by the third masonic degree, that of master mason, which is conferred with considerable ceremony. The phrase as often employed includes not only the use of physical violence, but also such forms of torture as depriving a prisoner of food, drink, sleep and toilet facilities and the prolonged and uninterrupted interrogation of him when exhausted, suffering and broken down by such deprivations. It is more commonly applied however to those forms of physical assault (such as beating with a rubber hose) which produce pain but leave no traces.
Since admissions and confessions of guilt have great probative weight when made voluntarily, it is obvious that unscrupulous offi cials interested in procuring convictions may be tempted to force unwilling confessions by improper means, and falsely to represent such confessions as voluntary. In several of the United States, assertions that such methods are used to extort confessions or to elicit information have for some time been so common as seriously to disturb the courts. Similar charges have in a few cases been
made recently in the course of criminal trials in England.
It is impossible to state to what extent the practices described prevail, as obviously there is no way in which the truth of an asser tion that they have been employed can be determined with cer tainty since those charged with employing them invariably make denial and the facts are known only to the participants. But those who are in close touch with the administration of the criminal law in many of the larger American cities do know that juries fre quently render verdicts of acquittal in cases where alleged con fessions, claimed by defendants to have been evoked by the use of force, have been received in evidence, which verdicts are ex plicable on no other theory than that the jury regarded the circum stances with suspicion and wholly rejected the alleged confession on that ground. (C. A. P.) THIRD (COMMUNIST) INTERNATIONAL: see INTERNATIONAL, THE.