Given reports about the aristocratic priests from their Pharisaic and Essene enemies, the improprieties of the priests here should hardly surprise us. Power and dogmatic certainty that one's cause is right prove a deadly combination for those who do not play by the rules, for whom the end justifies the means. Their possible breaches of legality (at least by legal theory as reported by later rabbis more concerned with it) were several. Judges were to conduct and conclude capital trials during daylight (m. Sanhedrin 4:1). Further, trials were not to occur on the eve of a sabbath or festival day (compare m. Yom Tob 5:2). Pharisaic rules (which the Sadducees would have ignored) probably also required a day to pass before a verdict of condemnation could be issued (m. Sanhedrin 4:1). Likewise, the Sanhedrin should not meet in the high priest's palace (though they would soon move, probably to their normal meeting place on or near the Temple Mount).

Most obviously, Jewish law opposed false witnesses. The biblical penalty for false witnesses in a capital case was execution (Deut 19:16-21). Cross-examination of witnesses was standard in Jewish law (as in Susanna 48-62; m. 'Abot 1:9), and apparently the examiners did their job well enough here to produce contradictions they did not expect. In the end, the witnesses could provide only a garbled account of Jesus' proclamation of judgment against the temple (compare Jn 2:19; Acts 6:14), which could have seemed to the Sanhedrin political reason enough to convict him (see comment on 21:12-17; R. Brown 1994:458). But the high priest ultimately must choose another tack; even a court as slanted as this one will not admit evidence from witnesses whose testimony is inconsistent (see Trites 1977:186; Stauffer 1960:123-24). Thus for the Jewish court (as opposed to Pilate) the chief priest seeks a new charge in Matthew 26:62-68: blasphemy (Blinzler 1959:170).