First of all, no one knows what year, exactly, Jesus was crucified, so there’s no way to assess that statement.
Second, it is not a crime in Judaism to claim to be messiah. It is also not a Jewish method of execution to crucify someone.
Whatever Jesus was crucified for (assuming for the sake of argument that he existed, and the story in the gospels is mostly true), it was not for claiming to be messiah. It was probably something like “sedition,” or it may have been for vandalizing the Temple, which the Romans considered theirs, and taxed heavily all activity there.
Yes, the gospels make the crucifixion seems very dramatic, but one part of it is that it is supposed to be the crucifixion of someone innocent of the charges, which is why they are deliberately vague-- also probably helps that blame is shifted from the Romans to the Jews.
It also helps that we have gotten to know the main character, who is about to be crucified. Have you ever read the book Dead Man Walking? or seen the movie?
It’s shocking and dismaying when the main character is executed at the end, and he is guilty of a disgusting crime.
I think this explains why it’s so dramatic that Jesus is crucified-- it’s written that way. I don’t think it ever states, or even is implied that crucifixion is unusual, or that no one has ever been sentenced to Jesus’ crime before.
The gospels do keep it a secret that anyone else has either put forth a claim to messiah-hood, or had other people assert his claim, when there actually were a few before Jesus, and a couple more between Jesus and the time the gospels were written down.
But none of those wrong claimants committed a crime in being wrong, at least a Jewish crime. I think at least one other was, in fact, crucified, and his crime was clearly sedition. He did actually try to lead an armed rebellion against the Roman “protectorate,” or whatever it was called. I think he started out as a member of one of the Zealot communities, but left it, to return to lead armed civilians more or less right into the hands of the Romans, because he wasn’t good at rebellion, but he talked a good story, and got plenty of people whipped into a frenzy.
I can’t find the book I read this in (it was red-- can’t remember the title, but I looked up the references, at the time I read it, and it was pretty accurate) at the moment, so working from memory, but I’m thinking this happened about 20 years before Jesus’ active time, so he probably would have been aware of the story, but maybe fuzzy on the details.
Jesus’ story became a dominant religion because of Paul. Paul spent many years seeking converts among gentiles and establishing churches. He apparently was good at it. His letters are older than the gospels. None of the other claimants to messiah-ship had a propaganda master in their corner, let alone one as good as Paul, nor one who thought of giving up on Jews entirely, because they knew what to expect from messiah, and rather preach to gentiles.
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