The Gospel accounts of the crowds at the trial do not pass the criterion of contextual credibility. We know from Josephus that Pilate was a brutal ruler who did not cater to the whim of the populace.
The idea of the crowds calling for Jesus’ blood does not pass the criterion of dissimilarity; later Christians telling the story may have wanted to emphasize the culpability of the Jewish people.
We can trace this tendency through the Gospels in chronological order (Mark, Luke, Matthew, John, and the
non-canonical Peter). This trend was carried out in church traditions in the second century, including accounts of Pilate’s conversion. In other words, Pilate and the Romans became more innocent, and the Jews became more guilty as time passed. This overlooks the important fact that the Jewish leaders, not the Jewish people, instigated the arrest of Jesus.
source credit: -Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D., Professor of Religious History, University of North Carolina