Jury of Your Peers (and God)

Just recently, the Coloradoan Supreme Court overturned a ruling which sentenced a convicted murderer to death. Why? They did this because the Jury deciding the case consulted a bible, found the passage “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” and interpreted state law through the dictations of god. The decision by the Coloradoan supreme court was an important one, a precedent which unequivocally indicates that the jury’s job is not to make judgments on morality and not to make judgments on the word of god, but rather to interpret the law and interpret reasonable doubt as reasonable people.

Verse for verse, line for line, the Jury deliberated on the man’s life. The purpose of a jury of your peers (dictated by the constitution and guaranteed by the 6^th amendment) is to witness a trial, filter fact from fiction, then, using common sense from common people and determining reasonable doubt from reasonable people, they interpret the case through the eyes of the law. The jury doesn’t interpret the facts through what their mothers told them, what their teachers told them, or, for that matter, what god tells them. The Jury doesn’t change the law, no, they abide by it. The legal system isn’t based on god (after all, only two of the Ten Commandments are legally binding), and it’s not based on morality (because, what really is?), its based on the law. Morality, a word tacked onto everything from voting preference to religious affiliation to personal choice, should not be a word we carelessly tack onto the jury system, lest we undermine the very principles we’re trying to preserve.