[Vision2020] Since you bring it up: witnesses as active prosecutors & executioners in capital crime cases

[Christopher Witmer]

Please consider the following biblical requirements that had to be met in
order for capital punishment to be carried out legitimately:

1) A minimum of two or three witnesses actively cooperating with the
prosecution
2) Witness participation in the execution ("throwing the first stone")
3) The biblical punishment for perjury requires that a perjurer must receive
the sentence that would have been meted out to the falsely accused party;
thus, false witnesses in a capital crime case would be liable to receive the
death penalty for their perjury. (This does not mean, by the way, that if
the accused is found innocent that the witnesses are therefore automatically
guilty of perjury.)

These factors work to restrain prosecutions of capital crime cases when the
evidence and/or testimony is not strong and clear. Given the advance of
technology, forensic evidence that cannot be faked, such as an accused
rapist's DNA recovered from both the victim's private parts and also from
the accused's skin found beneath the victim's fingernails, ought to be
admissible as strong evidence that can clearly establish a person's
innocence or guilt. But when a case is based on witness testimony,
biblically speaking, the witnesses have a huge responsibility because they
must actively participate in the execution and they are themsleves liable to
the death penalty if they are found to have committed perjury against an
innocent person.

Now, to apply this to the specific case of homosexual crimes, to the best of
my knowledge, although the Bible mentions various specific instances of
people being executed for various capital offenses, there is not a single
recorded reference to anyone actually being put to death for sodomy in the
Bible, even though the Bible clearly considers it to be a crime worthy of
the death penalty (at least in some cases). There is specific mention of
persons found guilty of homosexual crimes being sent into exile, but no
reference to the death penalty actually being carried out for a homosexual
crime. (The judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah included an element of
attempted homosexual rape, but the sentence had already been passed and it
can't be said that the judgment constituted the death penalty for homosexual
rape simpliciter.) It wouldn't surprise me if the actual number of people
put to death for homosexual crimes in the entire history of ancient Israel
was precisely zero. Given the circumstances under which such crimes could be
prosecuted, one would expect the number to have been extremely small.
Essentially someone would have had to commit a homosexual crime in public in
order for such a crime to be prosecutable. Even in modern America, how many
of us have chanced upon two men engaging in sex in a public place? It does
not happen very often, and in a society with strict laws against homosexual
crimes like Israel's, two men could avoid putting themselves in a situation
where they were liable to be charged with such a crime simply by doing such
things in secret, rather than out in the open. The whole point of having
such laws on the books never was, and never would be, to create a situation
in which you could go out and actively hunt down suspected homosexuals to
exile them or put them to death. FAR FROM IT. The point of having such laws
on the books is so the national polity can honestly say to God, "As a sign
that we acknowledge your commandments, O Lord, we have arranged our own laws
accordingly." A society would only do that in the first place if it had
already been transformed by the gospel, and I would expect God to pour out
His spirit upon such a society so that it would become characterized by
greater holiness and uprightness of character. So when I say that I look
forward to the day that such laws are once again on the books, it does not
mean that I therefore look forward to seeing homosexuals actually being put
to death. Rather, I anticipate, and hope, that in such a situation it might
never be necessary to actually carry out even a single such execution.

- Chris