Why would the Romans give a tomb, to a man, who in their eyes, was an executed criminal?
>> Why would the Romans give a tomb, to a man, who in their eyes, was an executed criminal? <<
Uh, they didn’t. The bible is very clear that Joseph of Arimathea received his body back, and laid him in a tomb. The only thing the Romans had to do with it was that they perceived that the disciples would remove him from the tomb and claim he had been risen, so they rolled an enormous stone in front of it, and posted guards.
I do wonder if this was a bureaucratic screw-up by Rome. They certainly could’ve denied Jesus’ body to his followers and saved the expense of the boulder and guard. But perhaps the fact it was a member of the Sanhedrin asking for his body back, someone failed to realize that Jesus had effectively been stripped of his Jewish citizenship during his hearing before Herod; perhaps Pilate hadn’t been aware of WHY Herod was sending Jesus back to him.
(To be clearer: The gospels don’t spell out WHY Herod returned Jesus to Pilate, but if the Jews alleged that Jesus had been born out of wedlock, they could’ve stripped him of his rights as a Jew. Indeed, the skeptics’ claim that the peace between Rome and the Hasmoneans would’ve prevented his crucifixion would be plausible if Jesus were a Jew in good standing; the fact that Jesus would have been perceived of as a bastard by a disbeliever would have been grounds for removing his nominal protection under Herod. Of course, Herod acted subserviently to Rome to prevent Rome from unilaterally rewriting the conditions of Israel’s nominal semi-autonomy, so such protection was largely nominal anyway.)
It was the private property of a man who donated it. The Romans' part was to send guards to make sure no one stole the body to fake a resurrection claim by Jesus' followers. The corpse belonging to God, the guards and the stone posed no barrier. See post 3 for the historial note about the owner.