Cerabino: Protecting the rights of Florida jurors who hear divine voices?

The reconstituted jury deliberated for 11 hours and found Brown guilty on most charges, and the judge sentenced her to five years in prison, a sentence she began serving shortly after the trial.

But her lawyers continued to appeal her conviction on the grounds that the Holy Spirit-instructed juror should have been allowed to remain, which could have resulted in a hung jury rather than a guilty verdict.

You might think this is a clear-cut case. After all, imagine the opposite: If a juror said that despite the lack of evidence in a criminal trial he was going to issue a verdict of guilt because God told him to do it.

And that the judicial system would allow it by saying that it's OK to send people to prison based on jurors hearing voices instead of weighing evidence.

Ridiculous, right?

So you'd think the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta would make short work of this appeal and issue a unanimous affirmation of the trial court's decision to exclude the juror.

But the decision, rendered this past week, wasn't unanimous, and it speaks to a changing federal judiciary.

In a vote of 2-1, the appeals court held that jurors are bound to consider the evidence and the law presented at trial. And nothing else.

"If the right to a jury trial means anything, it means a right to a verdict based on the evidence," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Robin Rosenbaum, a former South Florida federal judge from Boca Raton.

"Indeed, the entirety of our procedural mechanisms is geared to achieve this result," she continued. "We have trials so we can ensure all jurors consider the same universe of evidence; we have an entire body of rules -- the Federal Rules of Evidence -- devoted to controlling the information on which jurors can rely in reaching their decision; and we expressly instruct the jurors that they must determine their verdict based on the evidence."

But 64 pages in this 116-page ruling came from the fiery dissent of U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor, who hailed the dismissed juror as the only one on that jury who obeyed the oath of rendering a true verdict "so help you God."

Pryor scolded his fellow judges, calling them "members of the credentialed judicial elite" for not being more sympathetic to the 28 percent of Americans who contend to be the recipients of divine instructions.

"Members of some religious groups are more likely than others to report two-way communication with God, underscoring that different people are used to thinking and talking about their prayer life in different ways," Pryor wrote.

And it would be wrong to exclude them from jury service, he continued.

"That large numbers of Americans believe they experience God's guidance in the form of direct personal communication should not and does not disqualify them from jury service," Pryor wrote. "Juries are supposed to be 'selected at random from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes.'"

Pryor continued: "Because more African-Americans and evangelical Christians believe God communicates with them, these two demographics will likely bear the brunt of the majority's decision."

Pryor got to the federal bench after serving as deputy attorney general of Alabama under Jeff Sessions, and later as Alabama's attorney general after Sessions became a senator in 1997.

Former President George W. Bush appointed Pryor to the federal bench in 2004, but his confirmation in the Senate was held up for a year due to his outspoken views on abortion and gay rights.

Pryor called the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established abortion rights "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history."

And while attorney general of Alabama, he intervened in a Texas case, arguing that the state's sodomy laws that criminalized gay sex ought to be upheld, likening gay sex to prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, incest and pedophilia.

"States should remain free to protect the moral standards of their communities through legislation that prohibits homosexual sodomy," he wrote.

Unable to win Senate confirmation at first, Pryor was elevated to the federal bench by Bush with a recess appointment, and then a year later voted in by the Senate on a vote of 53-45.

Once on the fringe, Pryor's now in the middle of the action.

President Donald Trump put Pryor on a short list of potential U.S. Supreme Court justices he was considering to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.

Pryor was considered one of the front-runners for the Supreme Court seat after Trump mentioned him as one of two people he was considering. But Neil Gorsuch was eventually chosen.

His lengthy dissent in Brown's case is another chapter in his views on religion and the law.

"My Catholic faith is the foundation of my worldview, and my judicial duty is governed, from beginning to end, by the law," he said during a speech at a 2007 Federalist Society event. "Faith properly informs the religious lawyer or judge, and morality is not in tension with fidelity to the law."

[email protected]

@FranklyFlorida

___

(c)2020 The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.)

Visit The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.) at www.palmbeachpost.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.