Scalia vs. Rabbi On Capital Punishment

Rabbi Barry Leff has an interesting posting today on his blog about his exchange with Justice Scalia during Scalia's recent visit to the University of Toledo College of Law. Leff asked Scalia about the possibility of imposing sufficient procedural hurdles to capital punishment to effectively outlaw it, drawing on Talmudic precedents that took that approach. Here is part of Leff's account:

I allowed as to how I wasn't a lawyer, I was a rabbi and more expert in Jewish law than secular law--to which he replied something like "Thank God," which I wasn't sure how to take--and I opined as to how the rabbis were "originalists" regarding the Torah (after all, it comes from God!), yet they effectively eliminated capital punishment through procedural barriers. Justice Scalia replied "I know about those rabbis--the Sanhedrin would declare a mistrial if they voted unanimously to condemn someone to death because they assumed there must have been something fishy going on!" The implication seeming to be that this was really going too far.