HOUSTON (AP) — East Texas jurors wrongly used a Bible during deliberations in a capital murder case, but there isn’t enough evidence to show they were prejudiced when they decided to send the perpetrator to death row, a federal appeals court said.
The ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes in the case of Khristian Oliver, who was condemned by a Nacogdoches County jury in 1999, a year after he and three companions were involved in a break-in in which Joe Collins, 64, was fatally shot and bludgeoned.
Oliver’s three accomplices received prison terms ranging from five to 99 years. He got the death penalty. In his appeals, his lawyers contended that jurors improperly consulted Bible verses that called for death as punishment for murder.
In its ruling posted Aug. 14, the New Orleans-based appeals court said that using the Bible “amounts to a type of private communication, contact or tampering that is outside the evidence and law.”
But the court said it didn’t see enough evidence to overturn decisions from the trial court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that upheld the jury verdict.