Ethics Newsline®

Instead of being put to death, criminal Robert Harlan will serve life in prison without parole after it became known that at least one juror pushed his view of Biblical justice in jury discussion, bringing in written Bible passages invoking “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” retribution.

While Colorado law encourages jurors to consult their “moral compass” when weighing capital punishment cases, the state’s Supreme Court ruled 3-to-2 that the jury in the 1995 case may have been unduly influenced by personal religious views and outside materials instead of the facts of the case, reported the Associated Press.

Such refusals have occurred in California, Illinois, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Washington. At least 11 states are considering protecting the practice by adopting so-called conscience clause laws, noted the Post.

While such laws typically would require pharmacists to pass along objectionable prescriptions to other staff or pharmacies, some say even that is asking too much.

“That’s like saying, ‘I don’t kill people myself but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does,’” Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, complained to the Post.

Pharmacy chains say they are trying to accommodate such workers by instituting back-up plans to fill prescriptions refused by their employees, struggling to balance workers’ beliefs with customers’ rights.

But other problems — late-night staff shortages, emergency situations, time-sensitive medications, and geographic isolation — remain. “What is a woman supposed to do in rural America, in places where there may only be one pharmacy?” asked Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Reacting to local complaints, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich last week issued an emergency rule requiring the state’s pharmacies to honor all prescriptions or have a plan to fill them promptly in case of such refusals. Those that fail to dispense the drugs could have their licenses revoked.

“This is happening all over the country,” Blagojevich said, announcing a toll-free line for people to report refusals by pharmacies. “There’s a pattern of this behavior. This is not just a coincidence, but part and parcel of a larger campaign” against women’s access to reproductive choice, he said.

Heidar Jabari, a supporter of the Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr whose militiamen orchestrated the raid, said the assaults went too far, but insisted that religious traditions authorized the attack. “Every Iraqi has a right to act against these transgressions,” he said.

The March 15 attack prompted a rare street protest a few days later, with hundreds of angry students marching on the governor’s office and demanding that the authorities apologize, disband the campus morality police, and return property stolen during the raid.

The Post notes that the protest was a rare event that “managed what no local party or politician had yet done”: interrupted a tide of religious conservatism that had replaced popular law with religious dictates.

Sinan Saeed, one of the students who was attacked, passed out leaflets during the ensuing protests. “For a moment, we felt the strength of our voices. We were making up our own minds,” he told the Post before conceding that if change comes at all, it will come slowly. “You can see on campus that students are still scared to speak,” he said.

The report notes that the nation’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, whose family holds power via an “unofficial alliance” with the fiercely conservative sect of Wahhabi Islam, voided the sentence handed down by the religious court.

Other Saudi cases include published ridicule of a religious scholar who said the Asian tsunami was God’s punishment for Christmas “fornication and sexual perversion,” and persecution of a columnist whose complaints about TV offerings offended the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.