Reddit reviews Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures

Yes because it indexed insanity. I took a class with a Orthodox Jewish law professor who also happened to be a lawyer. There’s also a good discussion of it in this book:

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo3627888.html

Edit:

Also this book contains a discussion of the discourses and evolution of Jewish law on the death penalty which changed from Biblical to classical to Medieval Times.

https://www.amazon.com/Execution-Invention-Discourse-Rabbinic-Christian/dp/0195179196/ref=nodl_

Israel’s de facto ignoring of the law in practice aside, de jure the death penalty is supposed to be all but forbidden in Israel due to the Rabbinical law on it. Eichmann is an obvious exception (and there’s a few justifications for why that was allowed), as is, yknow, their policy of assassination and carpet bombing, but there are, in fact, sub segments of Orthodox Jews who won’t serve in the IDF, ON TOP of the other normal reasons, bc they view it as in violation of the laws.

Also David Daube has a good analysis of the Talmudic law on executions, etc. so, for example, if an oppressive power demand you turn over a specific person for execution one is allowed to do so for the sake of self preservation, but one is not allowed to do so for “any odd person” (Hayes, p 189, 2017). The two things of note are that people are enjoined to self preservation in light of oppression & a murderous state, and one can’t be complicit in the murder of another or oneself.