Қазақ еврей құқығында өлім жазасы

Jewish laws on capital punishment

Capital punishment in traditional Jewish law has been defined in Codes of Jewish law dating back to medieval times, based on a system of oral laws contained in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud, the primary source being the Hebrew Bible. In traditional Jewish law there are four types of capital punishment: a) stoning, b) burning by ingesting molten lead, c) strangling, and d) beheading, each being the punishment for specific offenses. 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.

Capital and corporal punishment in Judaism have a complex history which has been a subject of extensive debate. The Bible and the Talmud specify capital punishment by the "Four Executions of the Court," — stoning, burning, decapitation, and strangulation — for the most severe transgressions, and the corporal punishment of flagellation for intentional transgressions of negative commandments that do not incur one of the Four Executions. According to Talmudic law, the authority to apply capital punishment ceased with the destruction of the Second Temple. The Mishnah states that a Sanhedrin that executes one person in seven years — or seventy years, according to Eleazar ben Azariah — is considered bloodthirsty. During the Late Antiquity, the tendency of not applying the death penalty at all became predominant in Jewish courts. 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. 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." 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". Maimonides was concerned about the need for the law to guard itself in public perception, to preserve its majesty, and to retain the people's respect. The position of Jewish Law on capital punishment often formed the basis of deliberations by Israel's Supreme Court. It has been carried out by Israel's judicial system only twice, in the cases of Adolf Eichmann and Meir Tobianski.

According to an oral teaching appearing in Megillat Taanit, the four modes of execution formerly used in Jewish law were mostly orally transmitted practices not explicitly stated in the Written Law of Moses, although some modes of punishment are explicitly stated. Megillat Taanit records that "On the fourth [day] of [the lunar month] Tammuz, the book of decrees had been purged (עדא ספר גזרתא)". The Hebrew commentary (scholion) on this line brings two different explanations of this event; according to one of the explanations, the "book of decrees" was composed by the Sadducees and used by them as proof concerning the four modes of capital punishment; the Pharisees and rabbis preferred to determine the punishments via orally transmitted interpretation of scripture.

The court had the power to inflict four kinds of death penalty: stoning, burning, beheading, and strangling. For some crimes, the Bible specifies which form of execution is to be used. Blasphemy, idolatry, Sabbath breaking, witchcraft, prostitution by a betrothed virgin, or deceiving her husband at marriage as to her chastity (Deut. 22:21), and the rebellious son are punished with death by stoning; bigamous marriage with a wife's mother and the prostitution of a priest's daughter is punished by burning; communal apostasy is punished by the sword. 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)." This expression applies to death by stoning. The Bible speaks also of hanging (Deut. 21:22), but (according to the rabbinical interpretation) not as a mode of execution, but rather of exposure after death.

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. Perpetrators were not burnt at the stake, but rather molten lead was poured down the perpetrator's esophagus. Alternatively, the burning was inflicted after the perpetrator had been stoned, a precedent that was established in Achan's stoning. According to Halakha, this punishment is conducted by pouring molten metal (lead, or a mixture of lead and tin) into one's throat, rather than burning at the stake. The daughter of a priest who completed the second stage of marriage commits adultery. Intercourse between a man and his daughter. Intercourse between a man and his daughter's daughter. Intercourse between a man and his son's daughter. Intercourse between a man and his wife's daughter (not necessarily his own daughter). Intercourse between a man and his wife's daughter's daughter. Intercourse between a man and his wife's son's daughter. Intercourse between a man and his mother in law. Intercourse between a man and his mother in law's mother. Intercourse between a man and his father in law's mother.

Death by the sword (הרג, hereg) was issued in two cases: for wanton murder and for communal apostasy (idolatry). The perpetrators of these crimes were beheaded. Committing adultery with another man's wife, when it does not fall under the above criteria. Wounding one's own parent. Kidnapping another Israelite. Prophesying falsely. Prophesying in the name of other deities. A sage who is guilty of insubordination in front of the grand court in the Chamber of the Hewn Stone.

Rabbinical courts have given up the ability to inflict any kind of physical punishment, and such punishments are left to the civil court system to administer. 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. 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.

In Conservative Judaism, the death penalty was the subject of a responsum by its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which has gone on record as opposing the modern institution of the death penalty: "The Talmud ruled out the admissibility of circumstantial evidence in cases which involved a capital crime. Two witnesses were required to testify that they saw the action with their own eyes. A man could not be found guilty of a capital crime through his own confession or through the testimony of immediate members of his family. The rabbis demanded a condition of cool premeditation in the act of crime before they would sanction the death penalty; the specific test on which they insisted was that the criminal be warned prior to the crime, and that the criminal indicate by responding to the warning, that he is fully aware of his deed, but that he is determined to go through with it. In effect, this did away with the application of the death penalty. The rabbis were aware of this, and they declared openly that they found capital punishment repugnant to them There is another reason which argues for the abolition of capital punishment. It is the fact of human fallibility. Too often, we learn of people who were convicted of crimes, and only later are new facts uncovered by which their innocence is established. The doors of the jail can be opened; in such cases, we can partially undo the injustice. But the dead cannot be brought back to life again. We regard all forms of capital punishment as barbaric and obsolete."

Since 1959, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union for Reform Judaism have formally opposed the death penalty. The Central Conference also resolved in 1979 that "both in concept and in practice, Jewish tradition found capital punishment repugnant", and there is no persuasive evidence "that capital punishment serves as a deterrent to crime".

Humanistic Judaism has no policy on the use of the death penalty.