Once the case has been decided, they take him out to stone him. The stoning place was outside the court [area], as it is stat-ed: Take out the blasphemer. One [man] stands at the courthouse door with flags in his hand, and [another] man sits astride a horse at a distance from him within his sight. [If] someone says, “I have grounds for his acquittal,” that one waves the flags and the horse runs and halts him. Even if he says, “I have grounds for my own acquittal,” they return him, even four or five times, as long as there is substance to his words. [If] they found an argument for his acquittal, they acquit him; if not, he goes out to be stoned. A proclamation goes out before him: So-and-so the son of so-and-so is going out to be stoned be-cause he transgressed such-and-such a prohibition, and so-and-so and so-and-so are his witnesses. Whoever knows any grounds for his acquittal should come forward and present them.

[When] he was approximately ten cubits from the stoning place, they say to him, “Confess, as it is the practice of those who are executed to confess, because anyone who confesses has a share in the World to Come.” For so we find concerning Achan, that Joshua said to him: My son, please give honor to the God of Israel and render confession to him, etc. And Achan answered Joshua and said: I have sinned ... thus [have I done], etc. From where do we know that his confession brought him atonement? Because it says: And Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? Hashem shall trouble you on this day” —- on this day you are troubled, but you will not be troubled in the World to Come. If he does not know how to confess, they said to him, “Say: Let my death by an atonement for all my sins.” R’ Yehudah says: If he knows that he is the victim of a plot, he should say, “Let my death be an atonement for all my sins except for this one.” They said to him: If so, everyone will say so in order to clear himself.