Here’s a court case that doesn’t just emphasize but screams why any religious influence is an enormous problem in a secular judicial system.

The gist of the problem in this particular case is that one juror reportedly told fellow jurists before deliberations even began that “the Holy Spirit told him” the defendant was innocent.

Now, the ultimately convicted defendant, former 12-term Rep. Corrine Brown (D-

Florida), is appealing her original conviction and appellate loss on the grounds that the juror’s dismissal at Brown’s trial constituted unconstitutional religious discrimination, the Orlando (Fla.) Weekly reported. An alternate then replaced that juror.

Brown had been charged with fraud and tax violations related to the skimming of much of $800,000 earmarked for children’s programs.

The good news is that a three-judge appellate panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals soundly rejected Brown’s claims of religious impropriety, ruling to let stand her conviction on 18 felony counts and five-year prison sentence.

In backing U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan’s decision to replace the juror at Brown’s 2017 trial, Judge Robin Rosenbaum in January 2020 wrote for the majority in the appellate decision, as Florida’s Daytona Beach News-Journal’s online site reported:

“Here, the district court (Corrigan) dismissed Juror 13, plainly and simply, because on this particular record, it concluded as a matter of fact that Juror 13 was not capable of rendering a verdict based on the evidence. Our holding today is a very narrow one, based on the particular facts of this record. That record reflects that the district court was very careful to ensure it was not dismissing Juror 13 because of Juror 13’s faith or because Juror 13 had prayed for and thought he had received guidance in evaluating the evidence and in actually making a decision based on that evidence. The district court showed that it understood — and we take this opportunity to emphasize — these things are allowed under our system and continue to be permitted fully under our decision today, whether jurors believe they communicate with a higher being or not, as long as the juror is willing and able to root his verdict in the evidence.”

Judge Rosenbaum’s very careful, lawyerly language in the decision underscores to unnecessary complexities religious encroachments inflict on judicial process.

In fact, what the judge was saying is that it’s “allowed … fully” if jurors choose to consult with invisible beings as a means of reaching a just finding at trial, if they are still able to “root” their verdicts in evidence. In other words, if jurors can ignore what “the Holy Spirit” or other divine imaginings supposedly tell them and render a just verdict strictly by the facts of the case, it’s OK.

That means … exactly nothing. It cancels itself out.

What the good judge is truly saying is, “Freedom of religion in this country is so foundational that we have to allow jurors, without consequence, to ‘talk to the Gods’ as part of their rational and legal process of determining guilt or innocence in a trial. And we can only hope it won’t corrupt their understandings of the evidence.”

Indeed, in a perfect world if jurors claim to actually be talking to “the Holy Spirit,” one of three divine aspects of God in the Catholic tradition, authorities should be able to have them psychiatrically evaluated for sanity before being seated on a jury.

But that’s just me.

Brown’s attorney also revealed how religion actually compounds the problem of religion in this case. Not only is religion an issue in the trial, but one attorney pointed out how a previous insinuation of religion in court proceedings added yet another wrinkle.

“I think [speaking to divine entities] gets to the core of the problem,” Brown’s lawyer, Bill Kent, said. “Either we can seek guidance from God and follow the guidance we receive or not. The court requires jurors to swear on oath, to do their duty, ‘so help you God.’“

There’s that as well. At some point in our history, believing lawmakers embedded God into the court system in the guise of an oath. So, we also have that to contend with before even getting to the actual, material evidence.

James W. Smith III, one of Brown’s attorneys, showed how religious thinking can distort legal deliberations. He insisted that divine consultations were only peripheral to the godly juror’s practical interpretation of factual evidence.

“I think this is nothing more than a circumstance of … a man of deep faith commenting and saying that something he believed beforehand had been reaffirmed by the evidence that he saw,” Smith argues at trial, according to a transcript. ”… I don’t think we have a juror who’s come in and said, ‘despite the evidence, I’m going to follow God, rather than the court.’”

Really. So what does “the Holy Spirit told me he’s innocent” mean, then, a priori, before the fact, as it were?

It means the juror decided before considering facts that he would “follow God, rather than the court,” meaning follow his own instincts. This is why Judge Corrigan’s and the appeals court’s decisions were sound.

But the underlying problem is that religious jurors continue to listen to God more than evidence throughout America, and there’s little we can do about it, unless they stupidly admit it out loud, apparently.

In the meantime, Brown is considering an appeal of her appeal.

Video/YouTube/Newsy

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