I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but . . . .

While I know that it’s usually not wise for me to disagree with my blogging betters, I am compelled to comment on the uproar raised by a recent case where a death sentence was overturned because the jury discussed Bible passages during sentencing deliberations. As far as I know, there is no substantial reason to doubt that the convict had in fact brutally raped a woman and killed her as she tried to escape him, nor was the conviction per se a subject of this appeal. The conviction was not overturned, but was commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

First off, it is unseemly that, during Easter week of all times, Catholics are clamoring for the civil authorities to execute anyone.

Second, and as some commenters noted, juries are expected to deliberate based on the evidence and the jury instructions presented to them. If the court were to allow Christians to discuss the Bible during these deliberations, what would prevent a jury with Moslems from discussing the Koran during another deliberation, or a jury with Gulag Donkeys discussing the works of Kinsey, Sanger and/or Felos in yet another? Under our laws, actual sacred texts can’t be treated differently than the texts others hold to be sacred.

Some commenters said the jury should apply the Bible as “foreign law” – a reference to both the U. S. Supreme Court’s use of European laws in the recent decision disallowing capital punishment for crimes committed by minors and the banishment of Christian words and imagery from the public square. I find it disturbing that the capital punishment case has generated so much more of a hue and cry from the conservative community than did a previous and vastly more pernicious case that cited European law: Lawrence v. Texas. Lawrence didn’t just overturn long-established laws against a broad range of sex crimes, it opens the door to a series of sociological experiments unprecedented in human history. Yet there was no similar uproar over the application of foreign law. Why? Why the rush to exonerate one class of criminals and to kill another? In this post-Lawrence world, capital punishment will soon be a moot issue as the habitually violent will seek protected legal status similar to that already granted by the court to several classes of sex offenders. Even apart from the question of capital punishment, by our acquiescence we inexplicably salute the passing parade of unspeakable crimes against nature that endanger the very survival of civilization.

Perhaps most of the sins that cry to heaven for justice do so largely as a result of our indifference to them under the guise of tolerance. Kyrie eleison.