Adams County District Attorney Don Quick asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to review the case of convicted murderer Robert Harlan, whose death sentence was overturned because jurors consulted a Bible in the deliberations room.
Jaquie Creazzo, who remains paralyzed after being shot by Harlan as she tried to save Rhonda Maloney 11 years ago, said she didn't care whether Harlan spent the rest of his life in prison or was put to death.
"If they told me he was getting out of jail or giving him a new trial, then I'd be all over it," Creazzo said Friday.
Still, Creazzo said she doesn't think the original decision by an Adams County jury should have been overturned.
"I think the jury came to a decision of good conscience," Creazzo said. "I think they used the Bible to justify (the decision) so they could sleep nights. I don't think they used it to make their decision.
"I wish to this day that Rhonda would have gotten some kind of Supreme Court ruling."
Lana Ochoa, the juror who unknowingly committed the Bible breach, said she has no regrets "because I had no clue."
Ochoa said she does feel terrible for the families of Harlan and his victim as the legal proceedings drag on.
"I just feel so bad for both of these families . . . to have hope and not have hope."
Ochoa said she brought out the Bible in an attempt to convince another juror to support a charge that was associated with the death penalty, which he opposed.
"I still stand firm that whatever happens to him is God's will," Ochoa said.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 3-2 in March that the death sentence imposed on Harlan by the jury was unconstitutional because of the Bible consultations. The state's high court said Harlan had to be sentenced instead to life in prison.
Quick's argument before the U.S. Supreme Court challenges the Colorado court's decision that the presence of the Bible in the deliberations room and the quoting of passages from it made the process unfair to Harlan.
"The dissenting justices were right," Quick said in a news release Friday. "Without showing the jurors were actually influenced by the Bible - and failed to follow the law - their decision for the death sentence should stand."
Quick also noted that Harlan's crimes "were extraordinarily evil and vicious."
"I agree with the jury that he deserves the death sentence," he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court is in summer recess and will not decide whether to review the Harlan case until after it reconvenes in October, Quick said.
The state high court's majority said typical jurors could be influenced by such biblical passages as the one requiring "an eye for an eye" and that a man who kills another person should be killed, and another requiring that people obey the government and its officials because they are chosen by God - both referred to by jurors in the Harlan case.
But dissenting justices Nancy Rice and Rebecca Kourlis said the death penalty should stand because jurors testified later that they weren't influenced by the biblical passages.
Harlan was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering Maloney, 25, in 1994, and shooting and paralyzing Creazzo.
Harlan ran Maloney's car off the road as she left her job as a cocktail waitress at a Central City casino on Feb. 12, 1994, and raped her at gunpoint.
Creazzo saw Maloney pleading for help on an Interstate 76 ramp and stopped.
Maloney got into Creazzo's car and the two headed to the Thornton Police Department with Harlan in pursuit. Harlan opened fire on them.
Creazzo crashed on the lawn in front of police headquarters. Shot twice, she survived but remains paralyzed from the chest down.
Harlan dragged Maloney from the car and into his. Her nude body was found under a bridge near Watkins a week later.
abbottk@RockyMountainNews.com
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