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one of his hands it is still permitted [to hand him over,] as we find
in Sanhedrin (27a): “Bar Chama killed someone. The Reish Galusa
[Exilarch] told Rav Abba bar Yaakov, ‘Go and investigate; if it is cer-
tain that he killed him, he should be blinded.’” Rashi explains: “His
eyes should be gouged out because [although] beis din’s imposition
of capital punishment was annulled they can impose this penalty
because ‘beis din are authorized to beat and punish even when this
is not required by the Torah’ in order to uphold the Torah’s laws.” In
Chiddushei Haran it is written: “It is amazing that they should [be
able to] judge and beat and punish not in accordance with Torah law,
with even greater severity than Torah law. In order to do this, there
is an even greater need for greater and more expert judges and how
can this be done in Bavel?! Rav David therefore explained that the
Reish Galusa was not acting with the authority of beis din because
he was not a judge, rather with royal authority, because the ruler is
empowered to root out destructive elements and he authorized the
Reish Galusa to do this at his discretion.”

See the responsa Eisan Ha’ezrachi (45) who discusses a similar
case where a murderer was caught by the non Jewish authorities. He
writes that he initially considered [taking him from the non-Jews
and] sentencing the murderer to having his limbs severed -- to having
his hand cut off and his tongue excised as mentioned in Teshuvos
Ha’rosh (above) but since a punishment of this type was once im-
posed by the Maharam z”l and the offender [subsequently] caused the
Jews great trouble, he retracted from this position and decided that he
should be sentenced to death i.e. that he should not be rescued from
the non-Jews, because whatever the poskim have written about our
not having the power to impose the death penalty only refers to Jews
actually carrying out the death sentence.1



1. For further discussion of this topic see earlier, siman 276 [and the Eisan Ha’ez-
rachi’s comments cited there, at the end of the siman] and further, siman 282, the
third topic,‘Should Criminals be Protected?’

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