Saving One Life is Saving the World: Jewish Law and the Death Penalty

In the parashah of "Shoftim" in Deuteronomy, we have the norms for  shoftim v'shotrim, the judges and professional criminal justice system officials.  We are commanded that tsedek tsedek tirdof, known as "justice, justice you shall pursue" though tsedek means "justice" in the sense of "righteousness," not in the sense of revenge.  The parashah goes on to discuss capital crimes, an eye for an eye, and the death penalty.  For many, they read it assuming that Judaism endorses the death penalty, with "eye for an eye" the "justice" principle underlying the norms.  In this teaching, I show how "eye for an eye" and the death penalty have been understood in Judaism, how restorative justice is the underlying paradigm of Jewish law with the one exception being intentional murder.  But in this special case of capital justice, the entire legal system is set on eliminating the death penalty so as not to risk killing even one innocent suspect.  The famous Rabbinic dictum that "to save a life is to save an entire world" is used by the Rabbis in Mishnah Sanhedrin to argue for saving the life of the suspect in a capital case, for when we use the death penalty, and should we be wrong (common in America), we have done irretrievable harm to the fabric of the universe.