Religious leaders challenge New Mexico's jury selection rules
The Associated Press
11.23.99
SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexicans who oppose the death penalty on religious grounds are discriminated against by being kept off juries in those cases, religious leaders are arguing in a lawsuit filed in the state Supreme Court. They argue that a death penalty opponent should at least be able to serve in the first phase of a capital murder trial, in which a defendant's guilt or innocence is determined.
"Catholics should not have to face exclusion from public processes and from performing their civil duties as jurors as a price for their religious belief," Archbishop Michael Sheehan said in a prepared statement issued yesterday by the plaintiffs.
Sheehan was joined by other Roman Catholic bishops, an Albuquerque rabbi, the New Mexico Conference of Churches, a Quaker, a Buddhist, a Unitarian minister and others in filing the lawsuit.
The state Supreme Court took no immediate action on their petition.
Currently, prospective jurors who say they could not vote for the death penalty or would have substantial difficulty doing so are automatically disqualified from hearing a capital murder case, says William Dixon, the Albuquerque lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
"It's gratuitous religious discrimination," Dixon said in an interview. The religious leaders say there is no reason such people should not be able to serve in the guilt-innocence phase of a trial, as long as they can take an oath to follow the court's instructions and apply the law fairly.
The death penalty opponents could then be replaced by alternate jurors for the second phase of the trial, in which a jury decides whether to impose a death sentence, they said.
The religious leaders want the state Supreme Court to rule that the present jury selection practice violates the state constitution, to order district courts to allow death penalty opponents to sit on juries that decide guilt or innocence, and to lift its rule that limits the number of alternate jurors to six.
Dixon said the challenge — the first of its kind in the state — is "a very significant request to interpret our religious freedom constitutional provisions."
"Disallowing Jews from criminal juries because of their religious belief has no place in a society, such as New Mexico's, that has long been a haven of religious tolerance and equality," Rabbi Joseph Black of Congregation Albert in Albuquerque said in the prepared statement.