That the whole group. We're going to learn another halacha (Jewish law) from the pasuk (verse) that says, “By the word of two witnesses or three witnesses the guilty person will be put to death.” We have that extra “three” over here, which seems superfluous. So the Mishnah is going to tell us another halacha we learn from that word.
When there's a group of two witnesses and one of them is found to be an invalid witness, either because he was a relative to somebody—the person he was testifying about or the other witness—or because he was disqualified. For example, let's say he was an avaryan. He violated the Torah. He was a thief. He lost his ne'emanut. He lost his believability. Their testimony is invalid. If one of them is invalid, the whole group is then knocked out. You don't have two qualified witnesses anymore. You have two; one got knocked out, so you only have one left.
Likewise, if you have a group of three and one of the three is knocked out—he's found to be a relative or a disqualified witness—we say that the whole group is invalid as well. Even though you still have two witnesses here, we connect the group of three to the group of two to the group of three in the pasuk, and we say that if one member of the group became an invalid witness, we reject the testimony of everybody else in that group. Where do we know that the same halacha even applies to a group of 100 witnesses? If one of those 100 is found to be an invalid witness, we knock out—we disqualify—the testimony of all the other 99 people in the group. Where do we learn that out from? Talmud lomar (the verse teaches). We learn it out from the pasuk, where it says the extra word edim (witnesses). It says, “You don't need to say the word edim two times,” so we learn out from here that every set of witnesses has the same halacha. It doesn't matter how many witnesses there are. If one witness in the group is disqualified, if he's found to be invalid, then the rest of the group is disqualified as well.
Rabbi Yosi is going to qualify the halacha that we just stated. What type of law were we talking about when we said that if one person in the group gets knocked out, is knocked out? Only when talking about capital crime, capital cases where somebody would be put to death. But when talking about money cases, if one of the witnesses was found to be invalid, the rest of the group could still give testimony, and they could still make a person guilty with their word. We do not disqualify the rest of the group in monetary cases, just the person who we found to be invalid.
According to Rabbi Yosi, there's a special dispensation to knock out the whole group when talking about dinei nefashot (capital cases). The Bet Din (rabbinical court) will find all sorts of ways not to carry out the death penalty. They don't want to kill people. They want to say that the guy is innocent. So this leniency only applies when it comes to dinei nefashot, but not with dinei mamonot (monetary cases). “Rabbi omer, echad dinei mamonot ve'echad dinei nefashot,” argues the Rebbe (Rabbi). He says this leniency—that if one member of the group is knocked out, the whole group is knocked out and cannot give testimony—applies to monetary cases as well as to capital cases.
Rebbe is going to give another halacha. We're mentioning this idea that people become part of a group. So there are two ways to become part of a group. According to Rebbe, if one is knocked out, the rest are knocked out as well in all types of law. Number one, if they testify together, obviously. That's one that's obvious. The second type of person who could form a group with another is someone who witnesses the crime together with them, but there has to be more than just witnessing. They also have to warn the criminal, or the person who's sinning.
If an invalid witness sees a crime together with a group of other people, the whole group is disqualified from testifying if one of them is disqualified, but only when they all warn the criminal, or the person who's about to sin, not to do it together. In such a situation, we see that the person wasn't simply witnessing and then walking away. If he warned him, it shows that he was going to eventually testify about it. So if they were both warning, that means they have skin in the game. They're involved now and are now part of a group, and if one witness is knocked out, the rest are knocked out as well. Their mere presence alone doesn't create the group, but the fact that they're witnessing the crime and also warning about it shows that there's a plan for them to testify, and therefore they form together as one group.
But in a situation where the invalid witness did not warn the criminals, did not warn the people who were about to sin, we can make the assumption that they were simply an eyewitness. They were watching, but they do not intend to take this further to the courts and testify. Therefore, they're not considered to be part of a group, and the rest of the witnesses are allowed to testify. They'll prove this through a logic.
If we said that an invalid witness disqualifies everybody else even if he just sees the crime with no intention to eventually testify, what would happen if two brothers were walking together, part of a crew, and witnessed somebody murder another person? Are we going to say that the whole group is now disqualified from testifying because these two brothers are considered to be kerovim—they're obviously relatives—and relatives are not allowed to serve together as witnesses? They just happen to see the crime. Are we going to say, “Oh, you saw the crime, you were together with 40 other people walking in the street and you all saw it together; now the whole group can't testify because two brothers happen to be there witnessing it,” even though the brothers obviously wouldn't have the intention to testify, both of them, because they can't testify?
So logically, we would say, of course not. The only time a group is actually formed is if the people collectively plan to testify, and that only happens if there's warning given. That's how a group is formed to knock out the rest of the people if one of them becomes disqualified from giving testimony...