[Avodah] halachic attitude to the convicted

[Daniel Israel]

Quoting Samuel Svarc <ssvarc at gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:35 AM,  <Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org> wrote:
>> should the general rule be that if someone , is jailed , for whatever
>> reason,  we should  be praying  for  his release?
>> is there any crime where that is NOT  true?
>
> Sure. Any person that halacha feels should be imprisoned.

Do you mean where he is actually sentenced k'halacha (i.e., by beit  
din), or where the facts, were they to be heard by a beit din would  
warrant his imprisonment?

If the former, given that there is no such beit din that is authorized  
to sentence people today, then this will never occur.

If the latter, so who gets to decide that the court's sentence was  
okay k'halacha?

And are you allowing for the possibility that a particular crime might  
not be subject to imprisonment by beit din (after all, imprisonment is  
not a penalty in the Torah), but the halacha would be maskim to the  
malchus imprisoning the person?

I tried to raise this issue several month ago, and IMO no one really  
was willing to speak to the ikar issue.

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu