‘Let me put this another way: You pick up your child from daycare, and she has a bandage on her arm. You ask what happened, and are told she cut herself badly on the playground. The daycare counselor then tells you, “I prayed for guidance on my actions, and gawd told me to take her to a hospital.”

Yes, right answer, but does that make you feel more comfortable with someone who couldn’t resort to common sense in such a case?’

That pinpoints what is so frightening about this jury. A sane parent would not trust his/her child to the whims of that daycare worker any more than any sane citizen should trust justice to the whims of such a jury. It would have been totally different if the daycare worker had said “The accident was horrifying and I had to spend a moment praying for calm before I could remember my first aid training. After doing what I could I then took her to the hospital, which did a better job of bandaging the arm and said she would be OK.”

Perhaps I was not clear. I will try again.

I have never contended that the prayer itself directly affected the verdict of the trial. Never.

The prayer was a symptom. It was an indicator that there was a problem. It was a warning flag that there was potentially a religious bias within the jury, a bias that could lead them to base their final decision on factors other than or in addition to reason and logic, specifically religious factors. This is an unacceptable bias in a U.S. courtroom.

And by the way, no, we can not measure the effect of this bias because we HAVE NOTHING TO COMPARE IT TO. We have no control. We can’t run the trial again and tell them not to pray this time and see what happens. Again, I am not talking about measuring the affect of prayer, I am talking about the impact of religious bias in the case, of which the prayer was just a symptom. We will never fully know how much the religious views of the jury influenced their decision. We just know that religion was important to this jury because they felt the need to pray about their decision. Religion was undeniably there in an overt, inappropriate role and we have no objective way of determining how much influence this bias had over the ruling.

J.J. Ramsey says, “No one has shown how prayer here has been anything but a Mostly Harmless(TM) waste of a few minutes.”

Yes, “here”. Yes, “Mostly Harmless”. Mostly. Yes, “waste”.

There. THAT one. Over THERE. Point to it. Make SURE others see the distinctions you like. All others must check theirs at the hat room. Rules are important. Especially yours, when you bring your bat and ball.

Trouble is, everyone is already playing with their own FOOTBALLS or BASKETBALLS or HOCKEY PUCKS.

Okay, I’ll play a bit of fast-pitch with you. The defendant’s life was being decided by a jury that, it is implied, found the available evidence insufficient to convict or acquit. So, they prayed, as if that would assist them in doing the right thing. But wait: they DID find the evidence sufficient to characterize it as a tragic accident that cannot have been avoided, and they DID acquit the bus driver based on that evidence, however wanting it may have been.

They didn’t pray for guidance. They prayed to feel better. The harm IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE isn’t in the fact that this jury happened to pray. Nobody with any sense is suggesting this. The harm is in the larger implication that can stem from this: that many people will presume that the jury arrived at a correct decision by praying, not because they weighed the available evidence. That prayer is a legitimate means of arriving at truth. That it might even REPLACE evidence as a source of it. You know, like all superstitious nonsense aspires to.

Is everything okay now? Can you now see the many potential facets of harm? Or will you continue to focus on your limiting distinctions?

No one here has actually offered a coherent account of how the prayer could have actually affected the verdict, given what we know from the contents of the article (or any other pertinent source).

If any or all of the jurors made the decision by listening to an imaginary voice in their head that they believed to be God, then the verdict was affected.

If any or all of the jurors considered any of the evidence differently as a result of imagining that they now had divine guidance, then the verdict was affected.

If any of the jurors felt uncomfortable, harassed, out of place or compelled to participate in the prayer such feelings could have impacted that person’s analysis of the evidence and thereby affect the verdict.

From the article, one can posit that any or all of those three things are not only possible, but some of them even likely to have occurred.

Except that’s not what we’re debating. We’re debating whether the prayer displaced evidence-based deliberation and thus had a material effect on the verdict. It would be trivial to argue that the prayer indicates a religious bias, but that hardly indicates whether the effect of the bias amounted to much.

No, my point is that the prominent discussion of prayer to some invisible friend casts doubt on the the quality of the verdict rendered.

I’m not saying they absolutely did not reach a reasoned decision. I am saying that there is doubt, and the doubt is sufficient to give the appearance of a miscarriage of justice. That the potential miscarriage went in the defendant’s favour does not render it any less of a miscarriage of justice. Maybe they did reach a reasoned decision based solely on the evidence presented – that’s definitely a possibility, and indeed, it is their duty to do so. However, they talk about praying for guidance, and that suggests otherwise.

I’m also saying that if they’d mentioned some other imaginary friend than “God”, there would be loud and boisterous howling in the justice system, and I am suggesting that God be given the same treatment as Cthulhu, Satan, or the wisdom of an OT-7 and whatever Thetans he’s in communication with.