fifty lashes, and the same ruling applies to a female slave.
If the person who confessed retracts his confession before the ḥadd is carried out on him, or even while it is being carried out, his retraction is accepted and he is released.
It is recommended for the imam to prompt the confessor to retract by saying, “Perhaps you only touched or kissed.”
Men and women are equal in this respect, except that a woman is not stripped of her clothing—only any heavy outer or padded garments are removed—and it is permissible to dig a pit for her when she is stoned.
A master may not enforce the prescribed penalty on his slave without the imam’s permission.
If, after judgment but before the stoning, one of the witnesses recants, they are all subjected to the ḥadd (eighty lashes for slander) and stoning is canceled. If a witness recants after the stoning has taken place, only the one who recants is flogged and he must pay one-quarter of the blood money. If the number of witnesses falls below four, they are flogged.
The conditions for stoning due to muḥṣan status are that the offender be free, adult, sane, Muslim, have married a woman in a valid contract, have consummated the marriage, and that both spouses were in that state of muḥṣan when the offense occurred.
A muḥṣan is not punished with both flogging and stoning. Nor is a virgin punished with both flogging and banishment, unless the imam sees a public interest in doing so, in which case he may exile him for whatever duration he deems appropriate.
If a sick person whose ḥadd is stoning commits zina, he is stoned; but if his ḥadd is flogging, the flogging is postponed until he recovers.
If a pregnant woman commits zina, she is not punished until she delivers; if her ḥadd is flogging, it is further postponed until she regains strength, and if it is stoning, she is stoned after giving birth.
If witnesses testify to an offense whose ḥadd is long past, and nothing had prevented them from establishing it earlier except their distance from the imam, their testimony is not accepted.