CHAPTER IV

HEBREW CRIMINAL LAW--WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE

_Competency.--The qualifications of a competent witness, under Hebrew law, were almost identical with those of a qualified judge, mentioned in a previous chapter. Self-evidently, all persons who were not incompetent, were competent._

_Incompetency.--The following persons were incompetent to be witnesses: Gentiles, women,[123] minors, slaves,[124] idiots and lunatics, deaf mutes, blind men, gamblers, usurers, illiterate or immodest persons, persons who had been convicted of irreligion or immorality, relatives by affinity or consanguinity, and all persons directly interested in the case._

The witness must have been a Hebrew, though the Talmud mentions cases in which certain facts were allowed to stand proved upon statements "made innocently" by a Gentile; that is, not as a witness in court.

Women were not permitted to be witnesses ordinarily, because of the "levity and boldness of the sex."[125] In capital cases, they were not allowed to testify against the accused, because the law required the witnesses to become the executioners of the condemned man, and it was not deemed proper to impose this solemn and awful duty upon the weaker sex.

Puberty or adolescence marked the age which qualified a person to be a witness in criminal cases; that is, the thirteenth year must have been passed.

Immoral and irreligious persons were incompetent to testify. Such men were termed "wicked" in reference to the law as laid down in Exodus