Luke 23:10

‘And the chief priests and the scribes stood, vehemently accusing him.'

Meanwhile, probably infuriated by Herod's attitude, the chief priests and Scribes pressed home their case with as much force as they could muster, probably aware all the time that Herod was treating them with contempt. In fact he had no doubt had Jesus closely observed while He was preaching in Galilee and knew perfectly well that all the charges were false. Thus he was dismissing the claims as irrelevant, and making it obvious that he was doing so. The centrality of this verse in the chiasmus brings out the emphasis on who were the main perpetrators of the crime against Jesus, although it was only made possible because those mainly responsible for justice failed. Pilate was a shifting sand who had to constantly watch his back in case he was reported to Caesar, and in the end sought only expediency. Herod was a bored and irreligious ethnarch who wanted only to relieve the monotony of the occasion. Neither wanted to sentence Jesus. The ones who finally achieved this end, but tried to keep clear of the blame for it, were the chief priests and Scribes.

We see in this the fulfilment of one of Luke's objectives, and that was to convince his readers that the high authorities appointed by Rome in both Judea and Galilee found no fault with Jesus politically. He had rather been crucified because of the hatred and jealousy of religious minded countrymen.