expression of the law, tells us, concerning the false testimony against
Jesus, that "their witness agreed not together."[157] This disagreement
caused the "standing testimony" of the first witness to fall and the
charge of threatening or attempting to destroy the Temple was abandoned,
as we shall see in a later part of this work.
"Adequate testimony," under Hebrew criminal procedure, was evidence that
was competent, material, and in legal agreement. When two or more
witnesses, being the entire number, against the accused agreed in all
essential details, their testimony was considered adequate, and if the
judges believed it to be true they based a conviction upon it.
_Antecedent Warning._--It is deemed appropriate in this chapter to call
attention to and briefly discuss a very striking peculiarity of the law
of evidence under Hebrew criminal procedure. In the chapter on Mosaic
and Talmudic law, reference was made to the celebrated proviso, called
"Antecedent Warning." This proviso was unknown to the Mosaic Code, being
a creation of Talmudic law, and is without a parallel in the
jurisprudence of the world. Briefly stated, Antecedent Warning, under
Hebrew law, meant simply this: That no person charged with crime
involving life and death, or even corporal punishment, could be
convicted, unless it was shown by competent testimony that immediately
before the commission of the crime the offender was warned that what he
was about to do was a crime, and that a certain penalty was attached
thereto. The warning was not effective if any time elapsed between the
admonition and the commission of the offense. Furthermore, the warning
was of no force unless it was shown that the alleged criminal had duly
acknowledged it and had expressed a willingness to suffer corporal
punishment or to die for the act. It must have been shown that, having
received the warning, the would-be offender turned to his monitor and
said, "I am very well aware of the nature of the act I am about to
commit, of the rules of law applicable thereto, and of the inevitable
consequences of my misdeed"--else the court could not consider the
condition complied with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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