The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge from a Texas death row inmate who claimed his constitutional rights were violated by jurors who consulted a Bible during deliberations.
Jurors reviewed a biblical passage relating that a murderer who used an iron object to kill “shall surely be put to death.” They were deciding whether to impose a death sentence on Khristian Oliver for fatally shooting and bludgeoning his victim with the barrel of a gun.
The court previously has said jurors should base their verdicts only on evidence presented in the courtroom.
State and lower federal courts upheld Oliver’s death sentence, despite testimony that some jurors in the Nacogdoches County case consulted the passage.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year said jurors wrongly used the Bible but said there wasn’t enough evidence to show they were prejudiced when they decided to send Oliver to death row in 1999.
Oliver’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to review the case, and the high court Monday refused.
“It’s a big disappointment,” attorney Winston Cochran said. “With a life at stake, I think they needed to be a little bit more open-minded.”
Oliver, 31, from Waco, was condemned for the 1998 slaying of Joe Collins, 64, during a break-in at Collins’ rural East Texas home. Three of Oliver’s companions received prison terms ranging from five to 99 years.
At issue was a passage in Chapter 35 of Numbers which, in the New American Standard Bible, reads: “But if he struck him down with an iron object, so that he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall surely be put to death.” Other versions of the Bible have similar passages, some referring to an “iron rod” as the weapon.
Collins was shot and then struck with the barrel of a gun, which Cochran said could be likened to an iron rod.
Prosecutors had argued there never was an implication jurors voted based on Scripture or had any kind of religious discussion.
Collins went out to pick up a hamburger for dinner March 17, 1998, and returned to find Oliver, then 20, and 16-year-old Benny Rubalcaba inside his home. Rubalcaba’s 15-year-old brother and Oliver’s girlfriend were outside waiting in a pickup truck.
As the two intruders tried to run away, evidence showed Collins got a rifle and shot Benny Rubalcaba in the leg. Oliver fired his pistol at Collins, then grabbed the man’s rifle and beat him with it.
One of the teenagers later would say he saw Oliver swinging the rifle at Collins like a golf club and then like an ax. The fatal wounds to Collins’ head and face left him nearly unrecognizable and with severe skull fractures.
Evidence showed Collins was shot five times by Oliver, with at least two of the shots fired while the man was laying on his back on the ground outside his house. A neighbor found Collins dead in the front yard. Collins’ hamburger was still in a bag on the front seat of his pickup truck. The wounded Rubalcaba, taken by his friends to a hospital, eventually told police details of the attack. Oliver was arrested in Houston with his girlfriend.
Defense lawyers interviewing jurors after Oliver’s capital murder trial discovered jurors had Bibles with them during deliberations.
At a state district court hearing two months after the trial, four jurors testified about the Bibles in the jury room and gave varying accounts, ranging from one Bible to several being present. One juror testified they had them because they would go to Bible study following court proceedings. Another said any reading from the books came after they had reached a decision. A third said the reading of Scripture was intended to make people feel better about their decision.
“There is contradictory evidence regarding whether the jurors’ consultation of the Bible occurred before or after the jury reached its decision,” the 5th Circuit said in its ruling in the case “Several jurors testified that the Bible was not a focus of their discussions.”
The court also said the trial judge had instructed jurors to not refer to or discuss anything that wasn’t in evidence, and that the jurors brought the Bibles on their own and without the knowledge of the judge.
Oliver does not have an execution date.
