King Noah had commanded his people "to bring Abinadi hither, that I may slay him (Mosiah 11:28)." Noah likely wanted Abinadi brought before him for a hearing, because simply ordering him to be killed would have only given Abinadi’s cause legitimacy. In Mosiah 17 Noah desperately wanted Abinadi to retract his prophecies to avoid incrimination. But Abinadi said, "I will not recall my words, and they shall stand as a testimony against you. And if ye slay me ye will shed innocent blood, and this shall also stand as a testimony against you at the last day" (Mosiah 17:10). Noah wanted to engage in a little plea-bargaining at that point, but Abinadi would not go for it.
Under ancient Near Eastern law, there were several bodies of statutory material giving the king the exclusive right to put anyone to death in his kingdom. Others in authority could execute punishments, such as giving forty stripes, but they could not kill him unless ordered by the king. That tradition persists all the way through 3 Nephi 6, when the text says that the governor of the land in Zarahemla was the only one who could authorize the death penalty.
We may wonder why so many of the people in the city of Nephi went along with Noah. One reason might have been economic security. Noah’s large building campaigns would have produced high rates of employment. Life was good in that sense. Presumably there was upward mobility in this relatively small society and those opportunities encouraged people to not want to rock the boat. When Abinadi came to preach repentance, the people did not agree with Abinadi’s ominous condemnations. There may have been some heavy rationalizations going on in their minds, as we mentioned in Mosiah 11.
Here is a lesson for us—we must always be on our guard that we are not rationalizing away our misconduct. Instead, it helps us to have bishops, stake presidents, teachers and ministering brothers and sisters to help us see how we can do better than we have been doing.