Power in Israel was delicately balanced between the Roman occupiers and the Jewish leaders who were held responsible to control the people or lose their privileges (John 11:48).  The Romans, as well as being invaders and economic beneficiaries of all their conquered territory, saw themselves as benefactors and generously agreed not to violate social customs or religious traditions.  To demonstrate this to the people, Pilate had agreed to release one Jewish prisoner each year.  

For Pilate this was a solution to his problem, because he did not want to condemn Jesus - who he knew to be innocent (Luke 23:4).  Perhaps also, the Jewish leaders could foresee the possibility of Pilate solving his 'Jesus problem' by releasing Him under the terms of the amnesty.  That was the last thing they wanted - and it seems that they excited the crowd to ask for Barabbas (as only one prisoner would be set free).

Crowds were a threat to Pilate, especially when they got out of control.  He had already been severely rebuked by Rome for overreacting to civil disputes in Israel, and he would not want things to go wrong now.  As the crowd approached and stated their case, Pilate would have felt trapped between his duty, his conscience and his fear of the consequences of personal failure.  But his response was a massive personal moral failure, in which the greatest casualty, apart from Jesus, was truth itself (John 18:38).

Although many matters in life are sorted without difficulty, most of the big issues require a crisis point decision. Manipulators know that: advertisers, marketeers and sales people, and those who deviously seek their own objectives.  They try to force others to 'make a decision', perhaps even against their better conscience.  In this process, moral pressure may be applied to agree something that seems reasonable and desirable, but is not right.  Church, as well as government, politics are littered with such ingenuous compromises; and many businesses that fail have been impaled on agreements that should never have been struck.  So today is a good day to set aside naivety in order to think and pray carefully about agreements that do not have the ring of truth about them.