Reply To: Can the severity of a sin be learned from the severity of the punishment?

Lets look at motive for a moment. Beis din is not equipped to take motive into account. surely you agree the poor person who stole to feed his family did a “lower averia” than the rich person who stole to spite the poor man
.No. I don’t. Stealing is stealing.
The sin is the same.
In shamayim they may add on punishment for intent. But that’s a separate part.
If you want you can call it a compound sin.
Down here we can only deal with the action. So they are both the same.
A king has the right to extra curricular judgemental leeway.
So David hamelech could also punish for intent.
Again your bringing proofs from the fact that we can say multiple sins are worse than one single sin, to try to show that we can evaluate two different sins, one against the other.
I see no proof.
אין הנידון דומה לראיה
Do I need a raaya that the rich man is worse? True I have one from Dovid Hamelech, but how did HE know, was this some sort of nevuah?
Granted beis din treats them the same, but that doesnt mean their act was the same.