Politics - This is an interesting court case

I read this article about a convicted rapist/murderer and the argument that his defense lawyer used to get him out of his death sentence. I am against death penalty on moral grounds and someday I might blog them, but the argument that the defense made and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of was of the life sentence becasuse:

The Supreme Court said that "at least one juror in this case could have been influenced by these authoritative passages to vote for the death
penalty when he or she may otherwise have voted for a life sentence."

Very interesting, at least the court recogized that the Bible is authoritative.

The defense argument was this:

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court last month, defense attorney Kathleen Lord said the jurors had gone outside the law. "They went to the Bible to find out God's position on capital punishment," she said.

I'm not sure, but weren't the majority of the founding fathers and those that crafted the Constitution, influenced by the Bible. And it makes it outside the law how?

The state was making the argument that is fairly tolerent:

Prosecutors had argued that jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible
or other religious texts during deliberations.

If they refer to the Bible or other religious texts like say the Quoran or a Buddhist text, that's not allowed either? Does that mean that no one gets a fair sentence, because somebody on the jury has a particular religious affiliation? I don't know, but I think this is just getting a little too picky about how much we are to shut off our brains and not express ourselves...but that's just my opinion.