Jury's Bible use voids death penalty

DENVER (AP) -- The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday threw out the death penalty in a rape and murder case because jurors had studied Bible verses such as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" during deliberations. On a 3-2 vote, justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for kidnapping 25-year-old cocktail waitress Rhonda Maloney in 1994, raping her at gunpoint for two hours and then fatally shooting her. The jurors in Harlan's 1995 trial sentenced him to die, but defense attorneys discovered five of them had looked up Bible verses, copied them down and talked about them while deliberating a sentence behind closed doors.

"To the extent Bowers relied on values we share with a wider civilization, it should be noted that the reasoning and holding in Bowers have been rejected elsewhere. The European Court of Human Rights has followed not Bowers but its own decision in Dudgeon v. United Kingdom. See P. G. & J. H. v. United Kingdom, App. No. 00044787/98, ;56 (Eur. Ct. H. R., Sept. 25, 2001); Modinos v. Cyprus, 259 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1993); Norris v. Ireland, 142 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1988). Other nations, too, have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct. See Brief for Mary Robinson et al. as Amici Curiae 11-12. The right the petitioners seek in this case has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent." [emphasis added]

So sayeth Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, and O'Connor in LAWRENCE et al. v. TEXAS.

Two thirds of the United States Supreme Court openly decide their rulings of United States constitutionality based on foreign law and precedents, and they are hailed instead of impeached. But let jurors in this country use their own moral values and consult the Bible in the process, the same Bible those six Justices swore on when taking the oath of office, well that's wrong. (And a murdering rapist gets to live a long life of eating and drinking at our expense.) Good thing the jurors didn't say they prayed about their decision, otherwise they'd be arrested for engaging in a religious practice on government property.

The Supreme Court said "at least one juror in this case could have been influenced by these authoritative passages to vote for the death penalty when he or she may otherwise have voted for a life sentence."

Judges have no right to tell jurors what thought process they should use to come to their decisions. By doing so it effectively influences the outcome of those decisions. If they want to consult the Bible, Webster's Dictionary, or the U.S. Constitution, that's their choice. How do they think we learn things to begin with? Much of it's by reading books, etc.! Are we to ignore everything we've learned though them because they might influence our decision? This is so stupendously ridiculous, it borders on the unbelievable.

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