Posted on 03/29/2005 2:02:29 AM PST by JohnHuang2
The Colorado Supreme Court has overturned a convicted killer's death sentence because jurors brought Bibles into the jury room and wrote down and quoted passages from the Old Testament during deliberations.
Robert Harlan will serve life in prison without parole after being convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for the kidnapping, murder and rape of a 25-year-old woman and the attempted murder of a woman who came to her aid.
Casino waitress Rhonda Maloney was driving home from work when Harlan forced her car off the road and raped her.
The victim escaped and flagged down a passing motorist, Jaquie Creazzo. The ''good samaritan'' was driving Maloney to a police station when Harlan gave chase and fired at her vehicle.
Creazzo was struck by a bullet and paralyzed in the attack. Harlan then pulled Maloney from the car and fled. Her body was found a week later.
The jury recommended the death penalty, but defense attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering several of the jurors brought Bibles into the jury room.
As WorldNetDaily reported, although jury members, who were sequestered in a hotel during the period of their deliberations, were not exposed to newspapers and other media coverage, court officials didn't remove the Bibles from jurors' rooms.
The defense argued allowing jurors to refer to religious works while deliberating was improper because they are not part of Colorado law, the Associated Press reported.
Two Old Testament verses from Leviticus were particularly problematic, claimed the defense. One read, ''fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him.'' The other: ''Whoever kills an animal shall restore it, but whoever kills a man shall be put to death.''
Adams County District Judge John J. Vigil, who admitted Harlan's crimes ''were among the most grievous, heinous and reprehensible'' he had ever seen, ruled the death penalty ''must be imposed in a constitutional manner'' and vacated the sentence.
The state of Colorado then appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
''The Supreme Court finds that it can no longer say the death penalty verdict was not influenced by passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor,'' the court said in a 47-page ruling.
The court said Bible passages, including the verse that commands ''an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,'' could lead jurors to vote for death.
Prosecutors argued jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible or other religious texts while deliberating and reaching a verdict.
I cannot believe this ... it is like a made up story about unrestricted decadence. I suppose that the next story I read will be about this killer getting early release.
Our entire system of law has root in the bible. Next they'll argue that Christians should be banned from juror duty. The left won't stop until they can feed us to the lions.
Judges. Evil.
Evil. Judges.
Those jurors were a bunch of idiots.
Come on, as if they didn't know what the Bible says about punishment before they were on the jury.
I agree that the court was wrong on this one, but those jurors are just plain stupid.
"The court said Bible passages, including the verse that commands ''an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,'' could lead jurors to vote for death."
And the problem is...?
The Bible also says 'thou shalt not kill'. This ruling is preposterous.
The left won't stop until they can feed us to the lions.
That's why we need to own the lions.
Is it going to get much worse?
I mean killing an innocent woman based on hearsay is preposterous.
The Bible also says 'thou shalt not kill'.
---
I think this is a common misconception. There is alot of debate over biblical translations on a number of parts of the bible. Check this out:
http://bible.cc/exodus/20-13.htm
'Thou shalt not murder' is probably (IMO) a better translation.
Jesus taught his followers...if they do these things to Him they will do worse to those who follow him
So you can pretty much take to the bank that given the power and opportunity and the law....they will..
It's just a matter of time
Terri S was one of their object lessons for us
Even our Christian leaders ran and hid from them
imo
The New Testament said "Turn the other cheek..."
I'm a more Old Testament kind of guy.
The jury open themselves up for this problem. They should have thought about this giving grounds to overturn any verdict they came up with. The people are supposed to consult the state or federal laws while on a jury not religious writings. How would you feel if it had been a Koran? It's the same thing. If someone has a religious opinion they should share it verbally and leave the holy writ at home.
"But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case.
What part of "You shall not suffer a murderer/rapist to live" do you not understand?
GOD
I agree foolscap. The jury should have known better and how would any of us feel if someone came into the jury room with the Koran, Torah, Pagan Bible, or International Law & Opinion in hand.
The man was on trial for crimes he committed against the State of Colorado and just as much as I am opposed to USSC using international law in it's rulings, I am opposed to finding anything in a jury room that is outside to scope of our laws. Just because the bible says we should stone people, we stone them? Not quite, at least not in the US. It's the law that keeps the playing field on earth level, it's the divine live that saves the soul.
I was about to make that same post. Good job. The translation is "murder".
For you younger "Freepers" that advocated doing just about anything that felt good!
Woman's murderer escapes execution
The crime was among the most brutal in Colorado history. Prosecutors called the man who savagely raped and killed former North Haledon resident Rhonda Gemeinhardt Maloney a "poster child" for the death penalty. In 1995, a jury sentenced him to die.
For 10 years, the only satisfaction Maloney's family could extract from the tragedy was the knowledge that her killer sat on death row. Monday, that sliver of consolation evaporated when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that killer Robert Harlan's death sentence should be thrown out because jury members consulted the Bible during deliberations.
Jurors are not allowed to be influenced by outside texts as they consider a sentence.
The court's 3-2 ruling imposed a new sentence of life in prison without parole.
"I feel absolutely horrible," said Kerri Gemeinhardt, 32, Rhonda's sister, in a telephone interview from her workplace near Denver. "This has always been to me about getting justice for Rhonda. This sentence being overturned is not justice."
Gladys Vitz of North Haledon, a cousin of Rhonda's mother who calls Rhonda and Kerri her nieces, said she was furious when she heard Harlan would leave death row and join the general prison population.
"He'll be able to go out and see the blue sky and feel the sun and have the breeze on his face, and his family will be able to visit him on weekends, and my niece will visit with her sister in the cemetery," Vitz said.
"We thought it was over, it was done, he was on death row, justice would be served. We thought we had closure," she said.
Rhonda and Kerri Gemeinhardt lived in North Haledon until the late 1970s, when their Paterson-born mother, Donna Lee, moved the family to Colorado. Their father, Andrew Gemeinhardt, stayed in New Jersey and lives in Haledon.
On Feb. 12, 1994, Rhonda, 25, was driving home at 3 a.m. from her job as a casino cocktail waitress, when Harlan, a 29-year-old phone company employee and the son of a police detective, used his car to drive hers off the road. He proceeded to beat and rape her.
Two hours later, badly bleeding, Rhonda, 5 feet 2 inches and 98 pounds, escaped and was picked up by Jaci Creazzo, a passing motorist. They sped toward a police station two miles away as Harlan chased them, firing bullets from his car that struck and permanently paralyzed Creazzo.
As Creazzo's car crashed to a halt on the police station's front lawn, Harlan dragged Rhonda from the passenger's seat. Creazzo reported he was yelling, "You thought you'd get away from me, you bitch?"
A week later, Rhonda was found naked and shot to death in a ditch. Her body had suffered more than 60 injuries - broken teeth, broken skull, broken legs - sustained when Harlan beat her with a baseball bat. He was convicted of murder and in 1995, and a jury voted unanimously for the death penalty.
Defense lawyers appealed the sentence after learning that a juror brought a Bible into the jury room during sentencing deliberations. Others admitted to consulting the Bible in their hotel rooms, copying passages concerning the death penalty to share with at least one other juror.
One cited the famous Old Testament passage from Leviticus 24:20-21, "fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth ... whoever kills a man shall be put to death."
The Colorado Supreme Court concurred with a lower court ruling, finding that "in a community where 'Holy Scripture' has factual and legal import for many citizens," a "typical juror" could be influenced to vote for death instead of life imprisonment by the Biblical text.
Contrary to the text, Colorado state law does not require the death penalty for first-degree murder. Only one juror is required to reject a death sentence for a sentence of life in prison without parole to be imposed instead, the court noted.
Kerri Gemeinhardt said Wednesday that attorneys for the state are deciding whether to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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