Court says no to basing death penalty on Bible

WASHINGTON — The nation’s highest court has upheld a Colorado court’s ruling that said jurors erred when they consulted biblical law to sentence a murderer to death. On Oct. 3, the first day of its 2005-2006 term, the federal Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear an appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of convicted murderer and rapist Robert Harlan.

A panel of Colorado’s highest court in March invalidated Harlan’s death sentence, saying jurors should not have taken biblical recommendations for punishment into account when sentencing. By declining to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Colorado court’s decision to stand. “The judicial system works very hard to emphasize the rarified, solemn and sequestered nature of jury deliberations,” read the Colorado court’s majority opinion. “Jurors must deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or distraction of extraneous texts.” But the minority justices in the 3–2 Colorado decision disagreed. “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,” they wrote.