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As the book of Bamidbar draws to a close, we learn about a very interesting solution for crimes involving involuntary manslaughter. If someone murdered another person intentionally they were to be put to death. Murder was a capital offense.
Accidents, however, demand a different approach. Say, for example, a man was chopping wood and wasn’t paying attention. He swings the axe backward and happens to hit a bystander, killing him. Is that the same as trying to hit him with the axe? Of course not. He certainly could be rightly considered negligent and liable for the other person’s death. And the family of the person killed would understandably demand satisfaction. They would, in all likelihood, want the person responsible for the death of their loved one be subject to the same fate.
No good comes from vengeance: murder is not a remedy for manslaughter. The Torah recognizes this. When people kill people, on purpose or by accident, other people want to kill them as revenge.
The solution in the case of accident: run away. Run away and never come back. What has happened is terrible and will bring out the worst in our nature
The Torah understands that kind of human response, and, after all, the Torah itself is full of eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth justice. What is remarkable is the system described here that establishes an escape for the accidental killer.
Cities of refuge are set up, so that in the wake of a deadly accident, the person responsible can flee from the angry relatives. Once he has taken sanctuary in one of these cities, he can not be harmed by people wanting revenge.
The person taking sanctuary can never leave his exile until the sitting High Priest dies and is replaced, at which time a general clemency would be proclaimed.
These cities, according to the sages, including Maimonides, must be livable--the people there must be allowed to live securely and comfortably. The purpose of these places is not to punish the inhabitants further beyond their exile.
After all, they were now cut off from everything and everyone they knew. Like the person they accidentally killed, they have gone out of the world.
It’s a fascinating and sophisticated answer to a complex problem. Each life is sacred, and blood spilled wrongfully contaminates the entire community, polluting the very land, as we read:
You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I Myself abide, for I the LORD abide among the Israelite people.
Wrongful deaths make it impossible for God to live among us. The blood of the innocent must be avenged, the crime must be expiated. The one guilty of manslaughter, knowing this, could save his life but had to forfeit the life he had been living. That life had to be given back as payment for the life he had taken.
Because it was not an intentional murder, he gets another chance, but in a different world: the world of the city of refuge. And, just as the death he caused was an accident out of his direct control, so too, would another death, out of his control redeem him from his exile: the death of the High Priest.
Another reason for the connection between the High Priest and the length of someone’s exile is the nature of grief. In the wake of the death of such a valuable and important figure as the High Priest, the entire community would be united in mourning. Individuals might be more likely to forgive or be able to get past the anger they had toward the person that had accidentally killed their relative.
Several commentators including Rabbi Plaut consider the cities of refuge a way in which the ‘sin of murder’ is contained, quarantined away from the rest of the world. Perhaps. I am of the mind that the cities of refuge serve instead as they are meant to: as shelter from the cycle of violence and bloodshed that killing creates. The cities do not protect us from the accidental murderer; they protect us from ourselves. Our need for vengeance is thwarted, and we do not pollute the land with blood-avenging mobs carrying out street justice.
We may well consider this in light of this week’s news out of California. On New Year’s Day, 2009, a police officer drew his handgun and shot a man in the back and point blank range. The man was lying face down and being restrained. Bystanders caught the whole horrifying scene on cameras. I was not there, I was not on the jury and I have no information about the case other than what is public record.
The officer involved in the shooting was just convicted this week of involuntary manslaughter. People were prepared for riots to break out. Of course, many are sorely disappointed with any verdict other than murder, at the least voluntary manslaughter, or any sentence more lenient than life in prison. Others are likely of the opinion that the policeman was just doing his job, accidents happen, and the guy who got shot was a criminal with a record and was resisting and might have been reaching for a weapon.
The basic facts are this: a cop shot an unarmed man in the back and killed him. In front of a ton of witnesses.
Let us assume that it was an accident--a death brought about by the negligence or inexperience, or both, of the police officer. He would have, upon learning of his victim’s death had an out. He could move to Tecucigalpa, and could never return to the United States. Or at least not until the entire Supreme Court of the US has turned over.
It might prove a satisfying model. Those crying out for blood-vengeance would have to go pretty far out of their way to get to him, and in doing so would be committing a much more serious crime. The killer himself would know that he was paying a price for taking a life wrongfully. His life is spared but he must live in exile. He too, passes out of the world he was born and lived in. Because, no matter what happens, that life is gone for him now anyway. His life, as he knew it, is over. He may as well run away and never come back.
There’s nothing we can do to repair or fix the broken world of the people caught up in this one tragic story. We can only pray that God send healing to them all and remove far from us such horrors.
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