Church and state were recently caught engaged in every lewd, lascivious act possible together in a Texas courtroom. While church noisily lusted after state’s laws and procedures, state indulged church’s wanton advances with an almost paternal affection. The fruit of their unhinged passions? The death of a man and democracy as we know it, Puritan-style.

On November 5, Khristian Oliver, 32, will be killed the way the Bible deems people should be killed—“an eye for an eye.” Of course, Gandhi always said an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but we’re not quoting the biggest messenger of peace within the past century; no, we’re going old school, or in this case, Old Testament—because that’s so, you know, relevant and everything.

Was Oliver guilty of committing a crime? Absolutely. He shot and bludgeoned an elderly man to death in order to rob his house. He committed a heinous crime and deserves to serve a sentence for taking a life, which the jury understood and did not hesitate to declare.

What they did hesitate over, however, was whether or not to give Oliver the death penalty. And why shouldn’t they hesitate? It’s a very tough, serious decision—to take a life once a life has already been taken—and should not be decided lightly.

In fact, the death penalty, found to be a cruel inhuman punishment often completed for the wrong reasons—or even on the wrong people!—by many nations, has either been banned or been given a moratorium in numerous countries as well as states. It’s reasonable that a random group of twelve people would find fault with it as well.

However, rather than turning to, say, science, hard evidence, the law, or anything pertinent to the case or the death penalty itself, they turned to—the Bible. Yes, that ancient book—which says in its various incarnations and convenient versions that it’s completely fine to own slaves, burn people alive, sell your own daughter and a plethora of other barbaric horrors—is the utmost authority on U.S. law and modern ethics.

After reading from the Book of Numbers, which states that “the murderer shall surely be put to death” and “the revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer,” they all agreed that the death penalty was a peachy keen idea. After that, they all promptly left to enjoy a public stoning of a good friend who wore a dress made out of a cotton/polyester combination, as the Bible instructed them to do.

Come on, jurors, the word “revenger” isn’t even a word. That alone should have tipped you off.

The jury room itself had four copies of the Bible in it; I wonder if there were equally the same number of copies of the Constitution—national or state? Any other pertinent research or evidence that’s been around since, oh, the past hundred years even?

Thankfully Amnesty International is calling for Texas to commute the sentence, saying that the jurors were clearly impartial. You have to wonder at people who say that God will be the final judge, but then decide to act as if they are God when given a bit of jury duty.