A Kenyan attorney is suing Israel and Italy over the execution of one Jesus of Nazareth whose death he thinks was unjust. Dola Indidis has turned to the International Court of Justice after the court was thrown out by the Court of Nairobi in 2007. Indidis would have the International Court of Justice overturn the trial that convicted Jesus and awarded him the death penalty.
“His selective and malicious prosecution violated his human rights through judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias, and prejudice,” the lawyer said to Kenyan paper The Nairobian.
“Some of those present spat in his face.”
At least, that’s what followers of his cult published in their admittedly biased literature on the subject. Expecting the gospels to hold water in court might be a stretch, but the Kenyan lawyer is at least not without precedent. Joan of Ark received a vindication that her trial and conviction were unsound, after she was put to death for proclaiming herself a warrior sent by God to deliver the French from the English.
“This is the same case with Jesus. The judge who sentenced him said that he had no jurisdiction to attend to the matter, but he went ahead to convict and pass a capital sentence under duress,” the lawyer claims.
The ICJ lacks jurisdiction, and so legal experts doubt Indidis’ efforts will succeed, the Daily Mail claims. Whether he can prove the 2,000 year old trial was characterized by “judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias, and prejudice,” would be difficult to ascertain based on the scant records we have of the proceedings.
But so long as we are righting the wrongs of history, shall we overturn Socrates’ sentence to death for refusing to teach philosophy? His trial and death are among the central documents in classical literature, and a source text for the gospel stories, which are modeled on the same trope. Meanwhile, expecting modern day Israel, a recently re-created state, to be held accountable for the injustice reported in religious legends may be a stretch.