in San Francisco, en banc panel of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated...

in San Francisco, en banc panel of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the death penalty for Stevie Lamar Fields, black. Fields, now 51, was on parole for manslaughter when launched a three-week wave of violent crimes in September 1978. He had been out of prison for just two weeks. Fields was convicted of three rapes, one robbery, two kidnappings and the murder of Rosemary Cobbs, a 26-year-old woman. A Los Angeles County jury had found him guilty, and sentenced him to death in 1979. A 2000 ruling by Judge Dickran Tevrizian of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California tossed the death penalty and sentenced Fields to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Tevrizian found that a juror's use of biblical quotations during the penalty phase was improper. Tevrizian’s ruling on the death penalty was overturned on December 8, 2005 (see) by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that ruling was cast aside on September 21, 2006 when the full court agreed to hear the case. Today the rehearing by a 11-judge panel voted 8-3 to reinstate the original death penalty, saying the use of the biblical phrases in the case did not prejudice the jury. " Prosecutors have long been barred from appealing to jurors' religious sentiments in urging a vote for death. But the 9th Circuit said Fields' case was different. "What may be improper or prejudicial when said by a prosecutor may not be so when said by a juror. Both the Biblical verses and the other concepts contained in the notes are notions of general currency that inform the moral judgment that capital-case jurors are called upon to make."