Capital punishment in Judaism

Except in special cases where a king can issue the death penalty, capital punishment in Jewish law cannot be decreed upon a person unless there were a minimum of twenty-three judges (Sanhedrin) adjudicating in that person's trial who, by a majority vote, gave the death sentence, and where there had been at least two competent witnesses who testified before the court that they had seen the litigant commit the offense.

Even so, capital punishment does not begin in Jewish law until the court adjudicating in this case had issued the death sentence from a specific place (formerly, the Chamber of Hewn Stone) on the Temple Mount in the city of Jerusalem.

[7] In practice, where medieval Jewish courts had the power to pass and execute death sentences, they continued to do so for particularly grave offenses, although not necessarily the ones defined by the law.

[3] While it was recognized that the use of capital punishment in the post-Second Temple era went beyond the biblical warrant, the rabbis who supported it believed that it could be justified by other considerations of Jewish law.

[8][9] Whether Jewish communities ever practiced capital punishment according to rabbinical law, and whether the rabbis of the Talmudic era ever supported its use even in theory, has been a subject of historical and ideological debate.

[10] The 12th-century Jewish legal scholar Maimonides stated that "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.

"[11] Maimonides argued that executing a defendant on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until convictions would be mere "according to the judge's caprice".

[45] The Mishnah outlines the views of several prominent first-century CE rabbis on the subject: "A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called a murderous one.

In all cases of capital punishment in Jewish law, the judges are required to open their deliberations by pointing out the good qualities of the litigant and to bring up arguments about why he should be acquitted.

Megillat Taanit records that "On the fourth[a] [day] of [the lunar month] Tammuz, the book of decrees had been purged (עדא ספר גזרתא‎)".

With reference to all other capital offenses, the law ordains that the perpetrator shall die a violent death, occasionally adding the expression, "His (their) blood shall be upon him (them)."

[61][62] The following is a list by Maimonides of the crimes punished by each form of capital punishment:[63] Death by stoning (סקילה, skila) was issued for the transgression of one of eighteen crimes, among which being those who wantonly transgressed the Sabbath day by breaking its laws (excluding those who may have broken the Sabbath laws unintentionally), as well as a male who had a licentious connection with another male.

Death by burning (שריפה, serefah) was issued for ten offenses, including prostitution and bigamous relations with one's wife and their mother.

The modern institution of the death penalty, at least as practiced in the United States, is opposed by the major rabbinical organizations of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism.

[67][68] In a 2014 poll, 57 percent of Jews surveyed said they supported life in prison without the chance of parole over the death penalty for people convicted of murder.

Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan wrote: "In practice, ... these punishments were almost never invoked, and existed mainly as a deterrent and to indicate the seriousness of the sins for which they were prescribed.

The rules of evidence and other safeguards that the Torah provides to protect the accused made it all but impossible to actually invoke these penalties ... the system of judicial punishments could become brutal and barbaric unless administered in an atmosphere of the highest morality and piety.

"[71] According to Yaakov Elman, imprisonment of criminals was impractically expensive under the material conditions of ancient society, which meant that the death penalty and other corporal punishments were the only available options for severe crimes.