In a unanimous decision, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld a 51-year prison sentence imposed by a judge who quoted a Bible verse when punishing a man for the rape of a young girl.
Last year an appeals court overturned the sentence, saying the judge acted outside Ohio’s sentencing guidelines.
The state Supreme Court disagree, The Associated Press reported. The state’s high court decided in a 7-0 ruling that Hamilton Country Judge Melba Marsh did not violate the due process rights of James Arnett, who pleaded guilty in 1997 to raping an 8-year-old girl repeatedly.
Marsh quoted a Bible verse during her 1998 sentencing of Arnett that says anyone who offends a child would be better off if “a milestone were hanged around his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Justice Deborah Cook wrote that the Bible was one of many factors that supported a “legally unremarkable decision” by Marsh to assign significant weight to one statutory factor — the age of the victim. (RNS)
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