USA - California. Judge Jeffrey Miller has overturned the death sentence of Rudolph Roybal

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller has overturned the death sentence of Rudolph Roybal, 59, White, because of Bible quotes. Judge Miller wrote that the repeated quotations and references to biblical law in the prosecutor's closing statements were so inflammatory that they affected the outcome of Roybal's 1992 trial. The opinion was filed last week. The judge also chastised Roybal's defense attorneys, ruling they provided ineffective counsel by not objecting to the prosecutor's inappropriate closing remarks. The ruling directs prosecutors to either grant Roybal a new penalty phase trial to determine if he should be sentenced to death, or to resentence him to life without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors have about 4 months to decide how to proceed. Prosecutors can also appeal the judge's ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Roybal was convicted of first-degree murder in the June 10, 1989 fatal stabbing and robbery of Yvonne Weden, 65, who had hired him a few weeks earlier to do some gardening. San Diego County Superior Court Judge David Moon sentenced Roybal to death on October 20, 1992. When it came time for closing statements, Deputy District Attorney James Koerber told jurors: "There is another book, written long ago, that mentions the crime of murder, and mentions what is the appropriate penalty for the crime of murder, and that book says a couple of different things. "It says, 'Thou shalt not steal.' It says, 'Thou shalt not kill,'" Koerber continued. "It says 'And if he smite with an instrument of iron so that he die, he is a murderer. The murderer shall surely be put to death.' It says, moreover, 'Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer which is guilty of death, but shall be surely put to death.'" Alex Simpson, a professor at California Western School of Law, said the issue is less about the Bible than the prosecutor asking the jury to make a decision based on something other than the evidence presented in the case.