The Bible’s Place Is Not the Jury Room

Re “Is Court a Place for Morals?” Commentary, March 30: I was struck by the Colorado juror who studied Leviticus 24 (an “eye for an eye”) during deliberations. She seemed to have missed the part of the Scripture in which Jesus substitutes the New Testament law of love for the Old Testament law of retaliation. She is not alone; many of today’s Christians are more comfortable with Paul and the Old Testament than with what Jesus actually says in the Gospels.

Bruno Giberti

San Luis Obispo

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Thane Rosenbaum misstates the reason for the overturning of the death sentence in the Colorado case and then uses this false premise to make a case that morality is being forced out of the jury room. Colorado encourages its jurors to bring their personal beliefs (moral and otherwise) into their deliberations. It does not allow jurors to bring in outside materials. It is one thing for a juror to read the Bible and then discuss their beliefs and opinions, it is an entirely different situation when that juror points to specific, annotated passages and urges fellow jurors to reconsider their own beliefs based upon what they are being shown. Rosenbaum asks rhetorically if another book, “Mein Kampf,” for example, would be permitted. Nonsense! No book is permitted.

Jurors have a right to express their moral beliefs in deliberations; they have no right to use their personal source material to try to coerce others, whether that material is the Bible, the Koran, the Torah or The Times.

Jim Yedor

Santa Ana