Today the U S Supreme Court overturned the centuries long conviction of Pontius Pilate, absolving him of any responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In a 6-3 decision along party lines, Chief Justice John Roberts found in error the long standing verdict of history that the Governor of Judea had acted out of personal motivation. Quite the contrary, Roberts wrote, it was strictly within Pilate’s official capacity that he ordered the crucifixion.
In support of his conclusion that Pilate was not acting out of personal motives, Roberts noted a heretofore unrecognized fact. Pilate actually admired Christ and had for a time considered making him court jester after being told of Christ’s whimsical parables. However, after Christ fed the multitude on three fishes and five loaves, Pilate sought to have him elevated to high priest, a plan denounced by Joseph ben Caiaphas, the incumbent. To mollify Caiaphas, but primarily to remove a threat to his regime, Pilate reluctantly ordered the crucifixion, an act well within the governor’s official duties, “The first duty of every official,” Roberts wrote, “is to preserve and perpetuate his rule, be he governor, satrap or inspector of hides and brands.”
In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh noted that crucifixion was not a death sentence, merely a punishment. “Unfortunately,” he wrote, some individuals perversely elected to die on the cross just to embarrass a government toward which they were ill disposed. Likewise in the case of time honored punishments such as keel-hauling and flogging there were the occasional fatalities, regrettable but hardly of consequence.”
Justice Gorsuch noted in his concurrence that in olden times, measures which today are deemed cruel and unusual were in fact a necessity. “Trial by water and trial by fire”, he observed, “were the only ways to get at the facts before the advent of the polygraph and Fox News.”
Remarking the perspective she had gained occupying the Tomas de Torquemada Chair of Jurisprudence at Notre Dame, Justice Barrett stated with apodictic certainty that had prosecutors been deprived of the rack, the thumbscrew and the iron maiden, many great truths would have gone unrevealed.
Despite having been challenged to recuse himself when it was learned that Harlan Crow had given him Pilate’s solid gold death mask, Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, the gist being: redemption. Romans, he observed, had long since become good Catholics and were thereby redeemed by Christ himself; they had hardly bothered anyone since their conversion, with the exception of Al Capone in Chicago, Lucky Luciano in New York, and Sam Alito in Washington, DC.
Justice Alito declared that no way could Pilate have gotten a fair trial, with the populace spreading the word that Christ was the only begotten son of God. The scriptures, Alito emphatically stated, say that we all are the children of God, and scriptures take precedence over man’s laws. “We here in this very court,” he continued, “we six justices are a testament to that divinity. If we don’t sitteth at the right hand of God, I don’t know who does.”
Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson, knowing their six confreres better than anyone, dissented.