The torture or wresting of Laws is the worst kind of torture.

Explanation

(English-origin maxim — no Latin equivalent; the English title is the original form.) Twisting a law to punish the innocent or to reach a result it was never designed to achieve is a greater injustice than any physical compulsion — cite this when government distorts a statute beyond its plain meaning to justify an overreach.

Where this applies

• A prosecutor uses a broadly worded disorderly-conduct statute to arrest a man for quietly filming a traffic stop, twisting the law far beyond its intended purpose.
• A tax agency applies an anti-fraud provision to penalize a family for a minor bookkeeping error, stretching the statute to punish innocent conduct it was never meant to reach.
• A zoning board invokes a noise ordinance to shut down a church's bell tower, distorting the law's original purpose of controlling industrial noise into a tool against religious practice.