In this predicament, where Nephi was brought in as a potential conspirator, he gave the final prophecy of exactly what would happen if the people were to go talk with Seantum. Indeed, they found the blood on Seantum’s cloak, Seantum turned pale, he answered exactly the way Nephi prophesied, and then he confessed exactly as Nephi had predicted. “And behold, the words which he [Nephi] had said were true; for according to the words he [Seantum] did deny; and also according to the words he [Seantum] did confess” (Helaman 9:37).
To those who found the five investigators lying on the floor, it looked like the five were the murderers who had been struck by divine judgement. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed in their direction. Nevertheless, the five suspects could not be convicted on circumstantial evidence under a legal system in which the often-invoked two-witness rule was inviolate.
In contrast, Seantum had blood on his garment. He went pale. While this is circumstantial evidence, he eventually did confess. However, under biblical law, in order to convict someone, there had to be two witnesses, and this is likely why the five investigators were not immediately put to death.
In fact, there are four cases in the Old Testament that illuminate this principle of witnesses. One of them is the case of Achan. Achan was one of the soldiers in Joshua’s army. When the army came back from battle, Joshua told everybody to turn in their loot into a central repository. Since, much of the booty would have been metal idols, they had to be very careful about what they did under Mosaic law. They especially did not want people keeping those gold and silver idols.
Achan did not turn in his loot. He buried it under the carpet of his tent, and then the battle went badly for the Israelites. Joshua consulted the Lord and was told that somebody had not turned in all they should have. First, they asked which tribe the problem was in, and then they narrowed it to one tribe—most likely casting lots, a common way for them to determine the will of the Lord. Then they asked which family group within the tribe, and finally they asked which man had done it. When they cast again, the lot fell on Achan, who confessed his sin. They checked the floor of the tent, and there was all the gold and silver that he had gathered. They stoned him, then burnt him along with his family, his animals, his tent, and all his property. They burn it all. They obliterated him from the camp because he had defiled the whole camp.
In addition to (1) the case of Achan in Joshua 7, the other cases that allowed physical evidence to serve effective as witnesses were: (2) the man put to death for admitting that he had killed Saul (see 2 Samuel 1:10–16); (3) the two assassins of Ishbosheth, the son of Saul, who were similarly executed (see 2 Samuel 4:8–12); and (4) Micah, the son who voluntarily confessed stealing from his mother (see Judges 17:1–4). How the ancients reconciled these four cases with the rigid rule that required two witnesses has long been a subject of jurisprudential attention. Aaron Kirchenbaum finds the evidence inconclusive: “Whether this pentateuchal requirement of two witnesses, adopted as standard Israelite criminal procedure (1 Kings 21:10, 13), was construed loosely, as an alternative or supplement to confession—as would appear from David’s juridical decisions—or whether it was interpreted strictly, as excluding confession—as taught by the Oral Tradition … —must remain an open question to the critical scholar.” See Aaron Kirschenbaum, Self-Incrimination in Jewish Law (New York, NY: Burning Bush Press, 1970), 33.
Rabbis interested in Jewish jurisprudence asked how this and the three other known cases could be reconciled with the law requiring two or three “witnesses.” When divinely revealed evidence was located, and when the culprit confessed voluntarily, was that enough? And so they developed a rule to harmonize the four Old Testament cases with the law requiring two witnesses by saying that (a) if you have what we call the corpus delicti, physical evidence of the crime, and (b) if God is involved somehow in detecting the nature of the wrong-doing and the wrong-doer, then the divine confirmation becomes one witness, and the corpus delicti becomes the second witness. But the rabbis also decided that this rule should apply only (c) when the confession is given voluntarily by the culprit outside of a judicial proceeding. This summation of the rule in Deuteronomy 19:15 in combination with these four Old Testament cases was articulated and explained in the Talmud, but this precise legal synthesis is operating here in the case of Seantum.
Just as Achan confessed his guilt in Joshua 7 as soon as he was detected by the oracle of God as the soldier in the camp of Israel who had hidden the contraband booty under the carpet of his tent, so Seantum immediately confessed his guilt, having been exposed by the glance of God’s all-searching eye.
Sometimes we may wonder why we are told so many of the details of a given story in scripture. This is certainly an interesting story on its own, but every fact and detail in the trial of Seantum, it turns out, has legal significance. It all shows that Seantum, in fact, was executed legally according to the law.
Moreover, Nephi could not be held guilty under ancient Israelite law as a co-conspirator. At the most—and of course, Nephi was not involved in a conspiracy—all he could have done was plan and talk about it. Israelite law could only put someone to death if you did something. A conspirator is not necessarily a doer. He may have prodded people to action, but he did not actually do anything, so when Nephi was accused, they say confess your fault. They do not say confess your guilt, which is a very subtle but correct point.
Given the complicated and important ancient legal issues presented by the case of Seantum, it is little wonder that the text makes special note of the fact that Seantum “was brought to prove that he himself was the very murderer” (Helaman 9:38). No further testimonies from witnesses (of which there were none) was legally needed to convict him, and one may thus assume that he was summarily executed.
Although the case of Seantum was quite unusual and therefore probably would have had little precedential usefulness in other Nephite cases, it was significant in several other ways. At a time when the influence of the church was in steep decline in the city of Zarahemla, God’s entrance into this proceeding demonstrated that he was aware of the corruption of political officials, to the point of openly sustaining and validating the words of his prophets. At least for a few years, many people were convinced by this episode that Nephi was indeed “a prophet” (Helaman 9:40), and some even thought he was “a god” (Helaman 9:41). Although these people soon reverted to their wicked ways, the case had been made that God knew well the wickedness of the robbers and assassins who continued to plague the Nephites. Thus, the case of Seantum sustained and encouraged the righteous few in their adamant determination to resist civil corruption and to believe in further revelation, as the righteous people did in the case of the five-year prophesy of Samuel the Lamanite, even to the point of risking their lives. No doubt for these reasons, the righteous historians at the end of this era singled out and emphasized the trial of Seantum as an important victory of God’s prophets over the factions of the wicked dissenters.
Welch, John W. “The Trial of Seantum,” in The Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: BYU Press, 2008), 323–334.
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Could Seantum be Convicted Without Any Witnesses? (Helaman 9:35–36),” KnoWhy 180 (September 5, 2016).