The Sixth Circuit has held that a judge
may cite to the Bible in deciding a defendant's sentence at trial. The dissent has some choice words in opposition to the Court's decision:
If the Constitution sanctions such direct reliance on religious sources when imposing criminal sentences, then there is nothing to stop prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers from regularly citing religious sources like the Bible, the Talmud, or the Koran to justify their respective positions on punishment. The judge would be placed in the position of not only considering statutory sentencing factors, but also deciding which religious texts best justify a particular sentence. Under this approach, the judgments of trial courts could begin to resemble the fatwas of religious clerics, and the opinions of appellate courts echo the proclamations of the Sanhedrin. The result would be sentencing procedures that create the perception of the bench as a pulpit for which judges announce their personal sense of religiosity.
oddly enough, the founding fathers agreed.