After the judges go back and forth, hear all the testimony and information they have, and discuss it among themselves, they reach a conclusion and announce the bottom-line verdict. The Mishnah says that once they had decided the verdict, they would bring the litigants into the courtroom to hear it. The head judge would say, “You, so-and-so, are innocent,” or, “So-and-so, you are guilty; you are liable.”
Where do we learn that after the judgment is over and the judges leave the courtroom, they are not allowed to go over to the person in question and say, “By the way, I was the one who found you innocent, and my friends, the other judges, found you guilty. But what can I do? The judges were the majority; they outnumbered me”? They cannot say that. About this type of judge, it says, “Don’t be a gossiper among your people.” That is spreading gossip. The decisions of the individual judges have to be kept secret. It also says that somebody who goes about gossiping is revealing the secret. The secret here has to be kept by the judges alone. Nobody can know who voted for what. It’s confidential. You just reveal the final decision to the people who appeared in court.