I posted the elders training school video of how to conduct a judicial committee on my YouTube channel last night. It got me thinking of the hypocrisy of the whole thing. And also how in their own publications they ridiculed the pharisees for the way they dealt with Jesus... which is the very same manner THEY use on the flock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lzmGJJpaFk
[Sources from The Watchtower April 1st 2011]
...they wanted his execution to appear to be legal. An analysis of their efforts to achieve that end moved one law professor to dub the whole affair “the darkest crime known to the history of jurisprudence.”
The Law that Moses delivered to Israel has been called “the greatest and most enlightened system of jurisprudence ever promulgated.” By Jesus’ day, however, legalistically minded rabbis had added to it a mass of extra-Biblical rules, many of which were later recorded in the Talmud.
The Witnesses themselves have added many of their own "laws" to what Jesus commanded. Whole blood/blood fractions, IVF, critical thinking, wanting to leave the org, 1914, overlapping generation to name just a few.
Courts could not initiate charges but merely investigated accusations brought before them.
Annas’ actions flouted the rule that capital charges were to be tried by day, not by night. Moreover, any fact-finding should have taken place in open court, not behind closed doors.
Judicial committees ARE taken place behind closed doors with no witnesses allowed.
So the high priest tried to get Jesus to incriminate himself. “Do you say nothing in reply?” he asked. “What is it these are testifying against you?” (Mark 14:60) This tactic was completely out of line. “Putting the question to the accused, and founding a condemnation on his answer, was [a] violation of formal justice,” observes Innes, quoted earlier.
The very first question a person is asked in a JC is "do you know why you are here?"
According to the Mosaic Law, trials were to be held in public. (Deuteronomy 16:18; Ruth 4:1) This, on the other hand, was a secret trial. No one attempted to or was allowed to speak in Jesus’ favor. No examination was made of the merits of Jesus’ claim to Messiahship. Jesus had no opportunity to summon witnesses for his defense. There was no orderly voting among the judges as to guilt or innocence.
This is so exactly like a JC you could be confused into thinking they modeled it after the pharisees. If you wanted your JC in front of anyone you'd be refused. And they'd hold the committee anyway without you present and make their decision with you not being there.
Many legal commentators have analyzed the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial. They have concluded that it was a sham, a travesty of justice. “That such a trial should be begun and finished and sentence formally pronounced, between midnight and morning, was a violence done to the forms and rules of Hebrew law as well as to the principles of justice,” writes one lawyer. A professor of law says: “The whole procedure was permeated with such gross illegality and such flagrant irregularities that the result can be considered nothing short of judicial murder.”
In a JC, a person can be disfellowshipped within the space of an hour, let alone between midnight and morning.
The Watchtowers own reasoning clearly shows such behavior is unacceptable, a travesty and illegal. Yet they are so blind to see that they do it themselves.
