Hi Josh,

I'm happy to hear your Siyyum plans, and I wish you success.

Thanks for the great question.

I will refer you to Rambam in chapter 2 of Hilchos Eidus, where the way to investigate the witnesses is explained. There are two kinds of questions we ask the witnesses. There are Chakiros Ð investigations, and Bedikot which are side matters of the main story.

Chakiros are critical details in the story, while Bedikos are the side details. Indeed, in the Bedikos, if the witnesses answer that they do not know, the testimony is valid since the details being asked aren't critical enough. In Chakiros, if one of the witnesses says that he does not know, the testimony is invalid since the story becomes holy when the main details are missing.

It is not far-fetched to say that the question of whether the victim was a Treifa can be included in the critical investigations of the case, and if the question is asked and the witness does not know, he is disqualified.

This is the actual Chidush of Rebi Akiva and Rebi Tarfon, that we can generate questions that might not be obvious, since a Treifa is not a common case, but once we ask the question, it needs to be answered properly.

It seems that this is what Tosfos (Chulin 11b) is saying. The Ramban disagrees with all this. He asks, if without asking the witnesses we can rely on the majority, how can it be that if the witness does not know the answer, we cannot rely on the majority. The Ramban offers that this a special Halacha in Hagadas Eidus that we learn from the Posuk "ve'Hitzilu ha'Eida". This means that we can do anything, even if it is not reasonable to 'save' the defendant from a death sentence.

Hope this helps,

Aharon Steiner