In an en banc decision in Fields v. Brown, (9th Cir., Sept. 10, 2007), yesterday the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 9-6 decision agreed with a 2005 decision of a 3-judge panel upholding the death sentence of Stevie Lamar Fields, who has been on death row since 1979. The majority held that the jury foreman's notes setting out Biblical arguments for and against the death penalty had no substantial effect on the jury's decision, so the court need not decide if the bringing of this extraneous material into the jury room amounted to juror misconduct. Two dissenting opinions were filed, each on behalf of three judges. Both strongly challenged the majority's statement that the Biblical quotations were merely "notions of general currency that
inform the moral judgment that capital-case jurors are called upon to make." The 99 pages of opinions involve other challenges to Fields sentence as well-- all of which were rejected. Today's Los Angeles Times reports on the decision.
