Rabbi Richard A. Block
All of this, however, has little if any bearing on the McVeigh case, from the standpoint of Jewish tradition. Like the vast majority of American criminal defendants, barukh haShem, McVeigh is a non-Jewish defendant in a gentile court. What does Jewish tradition teach about such a situation?
In this regard, the seven commandments of b'nai Noach come into play. The Noahide code prohibits murder, theft and sexual immorality and requires that established violators of the code may be, or in the view of some, must be punished by imposing the death penalty.* Jewish law provides that in gentile courts the testimony of a single eyewitness suffices for conviction and execution, but the admissibility of confessions is a matter of dispute.5°It is unclear whether capital punishment may be imposed on the basis of circumstantial evidence.” Rabbi David Bleich cites a statement by Rambam in Guide the Perplexed> that a gentile sovereign may do so and reasons as follows: Since gentile courts are empowered to enforce the provisions of the Noahide code and possess delegated authority to impose“the sovereign’s justice,” it can be strongly argued that such courts may impose capital punishment on the basis of circumstantial evidence, as in the case of Timothy McVeigh .
Where does this leave the committed Jew who seeks to ground his or her position on capital punishment in Jewish tradition? In the final analysis, Jewish tradition is ambivalent about capital punishment and the claim that there is only one coherent, Jewish authentic position on the subject strikes me as intellectually dishonest and morally flawed. As I observed in 1983, in an article in The Journal of Reform Judaism:*“Such a position can emerge[only] from a personal confrontation with Jewish tradition, as one draws upon the part of the tradition that resonates most intense within oneself.”
For me, the most resonant aspect of the tradition is its reluctance to take a human life, even a life that“deserves” to be taken, its reluctance to become a killer in response to a killing. Society certainly has the right—ought indeed, it has the obligation—to protect itself by punishing criminals, but it ought not kill criminals on the unproved and unprovable supposition that capital punishment saves lives by deterring crime.
Capital punishment may be just, but it cannot be adminis tered in a just, fair and uniform manner. Our legal system is the finest humanity has ever known, but it is far from perfect. Its