How quickly the guilty party is put to death is one of the differences between Jewish law and American law. In Jewish law the guilty party is executed very same day he is found guilty. Delaying capital punishment is considered a form of emotional torture. The time of the appeal is limited to the time it takes to travel from the court to the place of execution, which is outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Sadly, according to Jewish law once the prosecuting witnesses
have given their testimony, they cannot recant under any circumstances. “Even if the witnesses retracted
their testimony, what of it? It is still clear that the condemned man is
to be executed, as the halakha is that once a witness has stated
his testimony, he may not then state a revision of that testimony. In
other words, a witness’s retraction of his testimony has no validity.”
(Sefaria.org translation) The court order sentencing the defendant to death is
carried out.
Today’s daf
TB Sanhedrin 44 states: “it
is necessary to state that the condemned man is executed even when
the witnesses retracted their testimony and gave an explanation for
having lied in their initial statement. This is like that
incident involving Ba’aya the tax collector, where it was discovered that
witnesses had falsely accused the son of Rabbi Shimon ben Shataḥ in revenge for
the son’s having sentenced to death for sorcery the witnesses’ relatives.”
(Sefaria.org translation)
Rashi
provides us with the rest of the background of the incident concerning Ba’aya, the
tax collector.
“Of Bayah
the tax-collector - It once happened that Jewish tax-farmer, evil, and a great
scholar died on the same day and in the same place. All the people assembled to
attend the burial of the great scholar; at the same time the relatives of the
tax-farmer brought his bier for burial. Enemies attacked the group, so they all
dropped both biers and ran. One student however stayed there guarding the body
of his rabbi. Sometime later the town dignitaries returned to resume the burial
of the great scholar, but the biers of the rabbi and the tax-farmer somehow got
exchanged and the protests of the student were of no avail. So the relatives of
the tax-farmer buried the great rabbi, which greatly distressed the student;
nor could he explain to himself what great sin had caused the one to be buried
in such a shameful way and what great merit in the other had brought about his
interment with such honor. His rabbi appeared to him in a dream and told him
not to be distressed. "Come and let me show you how greatly I am honored
in paradise and let me also show you that man in hell with the hinges of the
gates of hell turning through his ears. Once I heard people calumniating the
sages and did not protest (and that is why I was punished); he once prepared a
banquet in honor of a city dignitary who did not show up, and he distributed
the food to the poor (and that is why he was rewarded)." The student asked
how long the poor man was doomed to suffer such difficult judgment. "Until
Shimeon ben Shatach dies," was the reply, "who will then replace
him!" "Why?" asked the student; "Because there are Jewish
women in Ashkelon who practice witchcraft and he does not subject them to
judgment." The following day the student related his dream to Shimeon ben
Shatach. The latter assembled eighty tall young men and distributed to each of
them a jar with a cloak wrapped up inside (it was a rainy day). He also told
them to make sure that they were always eighty in number. "When you come
inside," he said, "one of you must raise his jar from the ground;
from that moment the witches will have no further hold over you; if that does
not work then we can never beat them." Shimeon ben Shatach went into the
witches' hall and left the young men outside. When the witches asked him who he
was he replied that he was a wizard who had come to test them with his
wizardry. "What tricks can you do?" they asked. "Despite the
fact that it is raining today I can produce eighty young men with dry
talitot!" "Show us!" He went outside and beckoned the young men inside.
They removed the talitot from the jars, put them on, and came in. They took
each man one witch and carried them, and were able to defeat them, and hung
them all up. The relatives of the witches were incensed. Two of them came
forward and perjured themselves by testifying that Shimeon ben-Shatach's son
had committed some crime that was punishable by death. He was condemned to
death. As he was being taken out to be stoned he said, "If I am guilty of
this crime may my death bring me atonement, and if I am innocent may it atone
for all my other sins and the responsibility for my death will be on the
shoulders of the witnesses." When the perjurers heard this they recanted
their testimony and explained that they had only acted because of their animosity
at the fate of their women-folk, and so he wasn't killed.” (Sefaria.org translation)
One of the lessons this story comes to teach us is that every good deed is ultimately rewarded at every bad he is ultimately punished. Sometimes the reward or punishment takes place in this world and sometimes in the world to come, olam haba.
I’m not a
lawyer, but I would venture to guess that in American law scheming witnesses
are allowed to recant, tell the truth this time around, and the previously
found guilty person is now deemed innocent. To kill an innocent man is a
travesty of justice
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