Mob Rules: Does the Torah Sanction Vigilante Justice?

Adapted
from a shiur by Rav Yosef Greenwald

Murder in the park

Victor Melo, 16, began his afternoon listening to music
in the sprawling national park in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia.

At some point a classmate of Victor’s, standing nearby,
had her phone stolen. She thought Victor did it and called out for help. Her
friends, assisted by onlookers from whom a pair of sunglasses had been taken
earlier, ran to punish the offender.

Over the next thirty minutes, while a hundred spectators
stood by, Victor was beaten savagely. When paramedics arrived, they found a
stab wound from a broken bottle in his belly, multiple screwdriver punctures
between his ribs, and a knife wound in his heart. They worked vainly to
resuscitate him.

At no point did anyone bother to search Victor for the missing
phone or glasses. Police later found them in another man’s possession.

Oops.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. In addition to
the world’s highest murder rate, Latin America has the world’s highest rate of
impunity. In Brazil and Mexico, police solve fewer than one in ten murders. (Brazil’s
Supreme Court has a 44,000-case backlog that stretches back 49 years.) Anticipating
no justice from the authorities, mobs mete it out daily, with participants
often summoned on WhatsApp. And the mob’s process for determining guilt can be
less than rigorous.

What is the Torah view of vigilante justice? This
article, first in a series, will begin to address the issue.

We are told in Pirkei Avos (3:2): “Pray for the welfare
of the government, for but for the fear of the government, each man would
swallow his fellow alive.” R’ Yerucham Levovitz, the Mirrer mashgiach, used to say, “Within a
person lies an entire zoo.”

When fear of government disappears (the lynchers are
rarely punished), there is no limit to the cruelty of which man is capable. Add
a dollop of righteous indignation and you have a recipe for staggering evil.

Additionally, acting cruelly damages the actor’s
personality, making him cruel (see Or Hachaim Hakadosh, Devarim 13:18). This
initiates a vicious circle. Each episode makes the people less human and more
likely to act cruelly in the future, so the society gets progressively worse.

There are multiple reasons vigilantes might act: in
vengeance, to punish violators or to deter future violations. In the Torah’s jurisprudential
system, none of these is the job of the public—or of the courts. The role of
Bais Din is not to maintain order in society, to forestall chaos, or to make
sure offenders don’t go unpunished. That is Hashem’s department. Rather, the
job of Bais Din is to promote a value system in society that keeps people
upright and good. Torah keeps at bay the baser instincts of man. Recognizing
and respecting the tzelem Elokim in
oneself and in others is, according to R’ Shamshon Refael Hirsch, the
foundation of a just society.

It has become popular of late in some quarters in the
United States to treat law enforcement with derision. Those who promote this
are in violation of that Pirkei Avos dictum, and they help to foster the
creation of the kind of society Chazal are warning us about.

There is a Torah precept (see Bava Kama 23) that kam lay bidraba minay, meaning that one who
commits a capital crime cannot for the same act be liable to monetary payment. This
is true even where the act is unintentional and the death penalty doesn’t
obtain (Kesubos 35). Rav Hirsch (Shemos 21:22) sees in this a great principle
of justice: As evident in Bemidbar 35:31, no amount of money can compensate for
murder. For the court to exact payment for the illicit killing of someone
created in the Divine image would be an affront to human dignity.

Even where the crime comprises the murder of one person
and financial damage to another (e.g., an arsonist who burns down a house and
kills someone inside who isn’t the homeowner), Bais Din doesn’t order compensation
for the monetary damage. Murder and theft are so distant from each other that
they cannot appear in the same case file. Murder is adjudicated by a minor Sanhedrin
of 23 judges, each with semicha (ordination) in an unbroken chain from Moshe
Rabbeinu. Financial claims are judged by three, no semicha required. And ne’er
the twain shall meet.

Equating phone theft to murder is an outrage to tzelem Elokim.

Although Bais Din cannot collect payment even if the act
was unintentional and the perpetrator is not actually subject to death, he owes
the money and must pay it latzais yeday shamayim, to
fulfill his obligation to Heaven. For this reason, as the Ketzos Hachoshen (28)
demonstrates from Rashi (Bava Metzia 91a), the victim is permitted to seize
payment nonviolently. However, if the perpetrator was actually subject to death,
like one who murdered intentionally and also damaged property, there is no
monetary obligation of any kind (Ketzos ibid. citing Yam Shel Shlomo B.K. 6:6).
A death sentence is the ultimate seizure; it wouldn’t make sense to “additionally”
take his money.

Likewise in the case of a rodef (pursuer), whom a bystander must kill if that
is necessary in order to save the pursued. Because he was subject to death,
there is no financial obligation at all. The Ketzos proves this from Rav’s
refusal to accept his property back from the man who burgled his home
(Sanhedrin 72). A burglar is considered a rodef and
may be killed (Shemos 22:1), because we assume he comes prepared to kill the
homeowner if he’s confronted.

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Last week, Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of
Brazil. During the entire election campaign, only once was he stabbed nearly to
death. (He survived despite organ damage and 40% blood loss.)

Elected on a platform of a return to biblical values, Bolsonaro
roundly rejects secularism and leftism. Maybe there’s hope for Brazil after
all.