The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer's Standpoint, Vol. 1 (of 2) / The Hebrew Trial

by Walter M. Chandler

POINT XII

THE CONDEMNATION OF JESUS WAS ILLEGAL BECAUSE THE MERITS OF THE DEFENSE WERE NOT CONSIDERED

LAW

"Then shalt thou inquire, and make search, and ask diligently."—Deuteronomy xiii. 14.

"The judges shall weigh the matter in the sincerity of their conscience."—Mishna, Sanhedrin IV. 5.

"The primary object of the Hebrew judicial system was to render the conviction of an innocent person impossible. All the ingenuity of the Jewish legists was directed to the attainment of this end."—Benny, "Criminal Code of the Jews," p. 56.

FACT AND ARGUMENT

The actual trial of any criminal case shows, upon the record, two essential parts: (1) The accusation; (2) the defense. The absence of the elements of defense makes the proceeding ex parte; and there is really no trial. And it is impossible to conceive a proper administration of justice where a defense is not allowed, since the right to combat the allegations of the indictment is the essential principle of liberty under the law. The destruction of this right is the annihilation of freedom by subjecting the individual citizen to the whims and caprices of the governing power. An ideal code of criminal procedure would embody rules of evidence and practice perfectly adapted to establish truth in the matter at issue between the commonwealth and the prisoner. Neither the people nor the accused would be favored or prejudiced by the admission or exclusion of any kind of evidence. An exact interpretation and administration of this code would result in a perfect intellectual balance between the rights of the state and the defendant. But such a code has never been framed, and if one were in existence, it would be impossible to enforce it, as long as certain judges insisted on aiding the prosecution and others on helping the accused, in violation of standard rules of evidence.

Now, the ancient Hebrew system of criminal procedure was no such ideal one as that above described. It should be remembered that there was no body, under that system, corresponding to our modern Grand Jury, to present indictments. There were no prosecuting officers and no counselors-at-law, in the modern sense. The leading witnesses preferred charges and the judges did the rest. They examined and cross-examined witnesses, did the summing up and were, above all, the defenders of the accused. The rights of the defendant seem to have alone been seriously considered. This startling maxim was a constant menace to the integrity of the government and to the rights of the commonwealth: "The Sanhedrin which so often as once in seven years condemns a man to death, is a slaughter-house."[322] Lightfoot is of the opinion that the Jews did not lose the power of capital punishment as the result of the Roman conquest, but that they voluntarily abandoned it because the rules of criminal procedure which they had from time to time adopted finally became wholly unfitted for convicting anyone. This view is unsupported by historic fact, but it is nevertheless true that the legal safeguards for the protection of the rights of the accused had, in the later years of Jewish nationality, become so numerous and stringent that a condemnation was practically impossible. The astonishing provision of Hebrew law to which we have referred in Part II known as Antecedent Warning had the effect of securing an acquittal in nearly every case. It is contended by many that this peculiar provision was intended to abolish capital punishment by rendering conviction impossible.

In the light of the principles above suggested let us review the action of the Sanhedrin in condemning Jesus to death upon His uncorroborated confession. The standard of thoroughness in investigating criminal matters is thus prescribed in the Mosaic Code: "Then shalt thou inquire, and make search, and ask diligently." The Mishna supplements the fundamental law by this direction: "The judges shall weigh the matter in the sincerity of their conscience." From what we know of the peculiar tendency of the Hebrew system to favor the accused we are justified in assuming that the two rules just cited were framed for the protection of the prisoner more than for the security of the commonwealth.