In March of 2005 the Colorado Supreme Court voided the death sentence for a murderer on the basis of the fact that a juror during the penalty phase — when the decision of what sentence to impose was being debated — had copied down a verse from the book of Exodus and quoted it during deliberation.
The law is clear that jurors are not allowed to consult outside sources or use information that was not presented at trial during a jury deliberation, so the fact that a juror consulted the Bible and wrote down a verse suggests that perhaps the Court was technically correct in upholding a narrow legal prohibition. Of course that this was a deliberation over punishment — a moral question — rather than over a determination of fact and law might suggest that such prohibitions are overly narrow if they limit moral debate.
And of course under their ruling it is not entirely clear that the prohibition would have held had the juror merely cited the verse in question from memory rather than consulting the source; the law cannot prohibit the application of cultural and educational background we bring to jury service, and many Christians (and not a few heathens) could have provided that citation as a matter of course. Further, in Western culture, the Bible is so ubiquitous and so identified with moral perception it is inconceivable that its moral lessons would not be debated and applied in such a deliberation, regardless of whether or not a specific verse was quoted or even referenced. Recently the Supreme Court of the United States prohibited a particular application of the death penalty (to those who were minors when they committed their crimes) based not on specific Constitutional principle but on a common understanding of the current moral atmosphere — including citations of legislative preferences from selected foreign countries and from selected individual states. Is consideration of Biblical principle, or principle from hundreds of secular philosophical sources which underlie so much of Western thought, any less relevant or permissible to the application of law, and particularly of punishment? I would hope not.
Continue reading