Q&A: Do Not Set a Violent Witness
Do Not Set a Violent Witness
Question
Rabbi Michael, hello!
I am studying a passage in tractate Sanhedrin that deals with those disqualified from giving testimony. The Mishnah lists people disqualified from testimony who are suspected of robbery on a rabbinic level, and later on as well the disqualification is connected to concern about robbery or to the fact that they are not engaged in the betterment of the world. Are these definitions of disqualification relevant to criminal law as well? Can a person suspected of robbery not testify, for example, in a murder case? If so, why?
Answer
Of course. Someone who is disqualified from testimony cannot testify about anything. Why should there be any difference? Whether the disqualification is due to suspicion of lying—in which case that suspicion applies to any testimony—or whether it is an intrinsic personal disqualification, in which case too there is no reason to distinguish. There is a rule that someone suspected regarding a matter neither judges nor testifies about it, but that applies only to someone merely under suspicion. Someone who has been convicted and determined to be disqualified as a wicked person—there is no difference between that matter itself and other matters.