Should the Bible be banned from the jury room?

Recently the Colorado Supreme Court, by a vote of 3-2, threw out a death sentence for a man convicted of rape and murder. The reason? Some jurors in the jury room read from the Bible before reaching a verdict.

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.

Oddly enough, the judge in the case – as Colorado law requires – sent the jury off to deliberate about the death penalty with an instruction to think beyond the narrow confines of the law. Each juror, the judge told the panel, must make an “individual moral assessment,” in deciding whether the defendant should live.

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.”

The jurors voted unanimously for death. But the Colorado Supreme Court changed his sentence to life in prison without parole.

“The biblical passages the jurors discussed constituted either a part of the jurors’ moral and religious precepts or their general knowledge, and thus were relevant to their court-sanctioned moral assessment,” the dissenting judges wrote.

Of course, the ACLU praised the ruling saying that the use of the Bible in the jury room was illegal due to the separation of church and state.

Should the Bible be banned from the jury room?

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Cross posted at Stop the ACLU! and The Wide Awakes