Good God, y'all

Someone explain to me on what grounds religious influence is considered incompatible with American jurisprudence? The point of a jury of your peers is to bring the sensibilities and backgrounds of your fellow citizens to bear on a case. This, by design, allows for the subjective standard of mutual understanding to temper impersonal justice. The vast majority of Americans have a religious basis to their lives and, therefore, their opinions on justice. To consider this beyond the pale is simply ludicrous. If any of our esteemed bloggers has any sympathy for this ruling please speak up as I find it hard to fathom a thoughtful person seeing this as reasonable. If you share my disappointment, what do you think motivates such a bizarre ruling? Can we only select juries from a pool of atheists and agnostics? Or is the issue that jurors should not attempt to persuade one another during a deliberation?

(It appears the link for this post is no longer active. It was linked to a story that reported in CO a judge ruled a verdict was not valid because the jurors consulted a Bible in their consideration of the death penalty.)