Pilate is often vilified for his role in the crucifixion of Jesus. It is interesting to speculate what might have happened if someone else had been the Roman procurator in Judaea at the time, but it would only be speculation. The conventional wisdom is that Pilate was not convinced of Jesus' guilt, and tried as best he could to get him acquitted, but caved in to pressure from the crowd and/or from the Jewish leaders. He famously washed his hands of the whole affair, indicating his lack of conviction or support of the sentence. The truth is, we really don't know how Pilate felt, or what led him to acquiesce to the demands or wishes of at least some of the Jews. Maybe he just got to the point that he felt it wasn't worth any more effort on his part; maybe he had other priorities to deal with; maybe he just was fed up with temple politics and decided to let the Jews have it their way. Who knows? At any rate, I think Pilate often gets somewhat of a bum rap - some feel that he was weak and caved in to the demands of the Jews, and therefore is responsible for the death of Christ. However, if you believe that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, then I suppose that, according to scripture (and I could be completely wrong on this, as I am not a biblical scholar or a theologian), Pilate was a necessary actor in the already preordained scenario (as some theologians hold that Judas Iscariot's betrayal was necessary to fulfill the requirements of scripture as well).

I can't give a good rating at all to a person that condemned Jesus to a terrible death, although reluctant to do so. Really, he did give into pressure.