Posted on 03/28/2005 12:36:05 PM PST by Sola Veritas
Condemned man gets life in prison for killing waitress Updated: 2:47 p.m. ET March 28, 2005 DENVER - The Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death sentence Monday of a man convicted of raping and killing a cocktail waitress because jurors consulted the Bible during deliberations. 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. The justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for the 1994 slaying of Rhonda Maloney. Harlan’s attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering five jurors had looked up Bible verses, copied some of them down and then talked about them behind closed doors. Prosecutors said jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible or other religious texts during deliberations.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I guess jurors don't have 1st Amendment rights now?
For that matter, people around here were incensed by the idea that the U. S. Supreme Court was considering the opinions of foreign law. Why shouldn't we be outraged that a jury constituted under our laws is consulting a foreign text in its deliberations?
"the judge's instructions"
Says it all.
This is just one more bit of evidence that jury service is an enormous waste of time, which is why I haven't answered a jury summons in years.
Did these people ever hear of the rule of jury nullification? It means that the jury is the final say on all matters. They cannot legally throw out a jury's ruling. A ruling can be overturned because of something that did or did not happen in the courtroom, new evidence, police procedures,etc., but it cannot legally be thrown out because of how the jury arrived at its verdict.
This has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment. Jurors are not allowed to bring in outside materials when deciding on a case.
Was this deliberations over guilt or deliberations over sentencing? If it was the latter, this ruling is a farce.
What are they supposed to do decide on sentencing, flip a coin?
Well the bible regulates slavery and doesn't exactly condemn it.
Thou shall not murder? OMG, we can't have that in our courts!
"The Robed Tyrants".
What's the difference between bringing written quotations from the Bible into the deliberations and quoting the same text from memory?
It's part of a judge's job to give jurors instructions prior to deliberation. This is to AVOID problems like this.
It certainly says that you don't know what "jury instructions" are, or what the difference between findings of law and findings of fact are.
LOL! I could have posted that myself!
Lawyers are the commissars of American Socialism.
"...Terri has committed no crime, but MUST DIE for her non crime!..."
The irony is sickening. If you sneeze the wrong way as a jurist, the rapist's life is spared on a technicality and an absurd one at that.
Yet we have no "proof" that Terry wanted to starve to death but does she get the benefit of a single doubt? Hell no. Judge Death, aka Greer, has spoken and there's no room for a "technicality" here like no living will.
I am a disgusted American.
You've never heard of jury tampering? You can throw out a verdict if it is demonstrated that the jury was bribed, or attempted to arrive at legal instead of factual conclusions, or that they based their decision on evidence they had obtained outside the courtroom.
I am more troubled by this.
Secret deliberation means just that.
How did the defendant's attorneys "discover" anything?
Related to this, any juror who writes a book about a case he has served on should be prosecuted. The only time jury deliberations are relevant outside a jury room is if what is clearly a crime has been committed.
They should have read Shakespeare instead. Something about lawyers.
The masters were told to take good care of them. They were to treat them like we treat our hired help. These were people being tossed about by the rulers laws of the day, but Christians were not to treat them like animals. They were to have human compassion for them.
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