There is in fact a long tradition in Christian apologetics that Pilate thought it was a perfect call and Jesus was victim of a witch hunt. But the Jewish elders were so balls to the wall for crucifixion that Pilate said fuck it and voted for crucifixion.
2/ There were even some apocryphal texts which record Pilate himself becoming a Christian because he felt so bad about the whole thing. The great majority of NT scholars, certainly those were in critical historical or textual tradition, believe this was not in fact the case ...
3/ but rather a later gloss born out of intra-sectarian rivalries between Christians and Jews in the early decades of Christian movement. These traditions and biblical quotes however have however been bedrock texts for centuries of anti-Jewish violence, force ...
4/ conversion, discrimination and more. So pro-Pilate advocacy has a thin historical basis and a rich tradition justifying genocide and expulsion.
