Death to Jurors!

[Vance R Koven]

On Tue, 16 Dec 1997, Marie A. Failinger wrote:

>    b)MN state constitutional law uses a compelling
> state interest test (in fact, the court has said the free exercise
> clause in MN limits justifications for
> prohibitingreligious exercise to health and safety, and curbing licentiousness (!).
> Assuming this ceremony could have been done in a manner that would not
> have started a fire, would there be a compelling interest in the
> appearance that justice was done according to "secular" rules and not
> according to religious practice, to justify the judge's
> wish not to have his courtroom symbolically associated
> with the practice?

I believe the original post on this subject indicated that in a previous
case the targets of the invocation actually died. Does this give the
government the out it needs to hold her guilty? Even if the medically
proximate cause of death is embolism or some such, shouldn't the state be
allowed to produce expert witnesses that the fear implanted by the ritual
could have caused the medical result?

> could she argue necessity as a defense, claiming that the greater evil is
> the injustice that she suffered at the hands of these wrongdoers (as she
> apparently believes)?

That sounds like a justification for revenge, the prevention of which is
about as neutral and compelling a justification as I can imagine a state
proffering.

It's too bad in a way that this poor woman's plight gets discussed with
such good humor. I'm sure we've all felt her way at times.

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