Bible Was Used To Decide Execution

Amnesty Reveals

Monday 12th October, 2009
Courtesy Of Big News Network

Amnesty International has highlighted a case of a man facing execution in Texas.

The human rights group has revealed a Texas man faces execution after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible when deliberating his fate.

Khristian Oliver, 32, is set to be executed on 5th November.

Jurors used Biblical passages supporting the death penalty to help them decide whether he should live or die. Amnesty considers that the jurors' use of the Bible during their sentencing deliberations raises serious questions about their impartiality.

According to people in the jury room at the time, several Bibles with passages highlighted were passed around during deliberation.

One juror read aloud from the Bible to a group of fellow jurors, including the passage "And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death".

A US federal appeals court acknowledged last year that the jurors' use of the Bible amounted to an external influence prohibited under the US Constitution, but nonetheless upheld the death sentence.

Amnesty International is asking for the death sentence to be commuted.

Khristian Oliver was sentenced to death in 1999 for a murder committed during a burglary.

According to accomplice testimony at the trial, 20-year-old Oliver shot the victim before striking him on the head with a rifle butt.