Barring faith from criminal trials: new ways to protect minority faiths from defamation

What does Druidry have to do with homicide? Absolutely nothing — which is why a judge has forbidden any mention of an Illinois man’s (not pictured) faith during his upcoming trial. Photo by Flickr user owenski.

In recent weeks, the news has been flooded with criminal cases where the alleged perpetrator belonged to a minority faith.

In Ohio, a couple has been arrested for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old family member. The male half of the couple, named Daniel Hess, allegedly told police that the assault was part of the Wiccan faith.

In Chicago, 54-year-old Joseph Nerone claims he stabbed his 84-year-old mother to death, and that he was possessed by Satan when the attack took place.

And in South Africa, two young men who set a teenage girl on fire, allegedly as part of a “Satanic ritual,” were sentenced to 17 years each in jail.

It’s worth saying that Wiccan practices don’t involve nonconsensual or illegal sex, and that Satanic practices don’t involve murder.

And it’s also worth saying that the mere mention of minority faiths in the same sentence with a crime suggests that the two are related. Most of the time, they aren’t.

So it’s interesting that, in Illinois, a judge has ruled that Christopher Vaughn’s Druidic beliefs may not be mentioned in the courtroom during his murder trial. Vaughn is accused of shooting his wife and three children in 2007, and has remained in jail awaiting trial since then.

The move to strike mention of his faith from the courtroom was made by Vaughn’s defense attorney, who argued that such discussions could prevent Vaughn from receiving a fair trial.

That’s an interesting approach — but the correct one. Even though Druids are peaceful, and their practices center on the veneration of nature, the jury is likely unfamiliar with those facts. That ignorance can quickly turn to discomfort or fear, coloring their views of Vaughn. (However, Vaughn made posts on a Druid listserv saying he wanted to live on his own in the Canadian wilderness, and the judge has allowed such posts to be admitted in the courtroom, though likely without mention of where they were posted).

Divorcing a defendant’s faith from his or her criminal actions, both inside and outside the courtroom, can protect both those on trial and those who practice the same faith. If this could happen in every trial — because faith is essentially never the motivation for violent criminal activity — as a culture we might stop associating beliefs we don’t understand with frightening acts.

This week, journalism site Poynter.org published a piece I wrote offering tips to journalists who are assigned to write articles where crime and minority faith overlap. There are many ways of making sure faith and violent crime aren’t falsely and unfairly connected; journalism reform is one, and barring mentions of faith in the courtroom such as in Vaughn’s case is another.

What others can you think of?

Fear leads to anger — and goth-bashing

Thirteen-year-old Casey-Lyanne Kearney was stabbed to death. Her accused killer has been called a “goth.” Not likely.

On Valentine’s Day, Casey-Lynne Kearney was crossing Elmfield Park in Doncaster, England when a woman allegedly stabbed her and left her to die.

Police, who called the assault random and isolated, arrested 26-year-old Hannah Bonser, a Doncaster resident, for Kearney’s murder and and for possession of two knives. Her trial is scheduled to begin July 2.

Even before Bonser appeared in court to defend herself, neighbors described her to the UK’s sensationalism-prone Sun as a goth:

… neighbours in Doncaster described her as having the look of “a Goth” — sporting dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses. She was said to be “addicted” to computer games.

One resident, who asked not to be identified, said: “The police were round here and they took some boxes of stuff from her flat. She was like a rocker, gothic type. She was very quiet.”

Talking to the neighbors is one of the oldest tricks in the reporter’s book. There are a variety of good reasons for this practice, but what neighbors say must always be taken with a grain of salt — these days, many people don’t know their neighbors particularly well, or may even have conflicts with them that drive them to say things they shouldn’t.

Not only are those descriptions very vague and patched-together, they don’t really describe an actual goth. (And, you can see in the court link, Bonser doesn’t look particularly goth.) Most of the time, it takes more than dark hair and “dark-rimmed glasses” to identify a goth. (Also, nice how the slipped in the “video games” angle too, eh?”)

More than that, though, these flimsy descriptions reinforce the false idea that goths are a remotely violent group. This idea, popularized after the Columbine High School killings in Colorado in 1999 (committed by two young men who were also falsely identified as goths), has been tough to shake. People outside the goth culture see the black hair, theatrical makeup and clothing, piercings and studs, and assume their fear of such an off-putting appearance must mean goths are aggressive. In fact, the most aggressive thing about goths is probably their appearance. Religioustolerance.org notes, “Goths tend to be non-violent, pacifistic, passive, and tolerant.”

Often to a fault. In fact, goths are much more often the victims of violence, as in the cases of Sophie Lancaster and Melody McDowell, both of whom were coincidentally assaulted in England.

In some ways, the comments made by Bonser’s neighbors constitute another kind of attack on goths — and reveal the layers of misunderstanding and discomfort that exist against them in modern society.

When someone on UK Yahoo Answers asked why goths are so stigmatized, another responded:

Unfortunately a lot of people (especially those who live in small towns & don’t have a lot of life experience, or even those of a low level of intelligence) will always feel threatened by something that is outside their own experience and/or they do not understand.

Or, to quote a certain wise green muppet, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

When will we stop being so afraid of one another?

How will Knox shed the “She-devil” image?

American Amanda Knox was acquitted today of murder charges after spending four years in an Italian prison.

How do you return to your life after being accused — even convicted — of killing your friend in a “Satanic rite” involving rough sex? How do you live down being called everything from a “She-devil” to “Foxy Knoxy?”

That’s what Amanda Knox must figure out. Today, she was acquitted in an Italian courtroom of murdering her friend, Meredith Kercher, in 2007. Originally, Knox was convicted of the murder, but a higher court released her this evening.

From the moment she was arrested, Knox was dragged through the mud, by tabloids and prosecutors who saw in the fresh-faced 20-year-old Seattleite some kind of kinky, bloodthirsty occultist, and they spared no effort in letting the world know what they thought of her. Now, as she returns to her former life, echoing the release of the West Memphis Three, it seems that the only sex games or Satanic practices were in the minds of the prosecutors.

In a New York Post piece, Nina Burleigh breaks down how the Knox trial turned into a “witch hunt”:

[Prosecutor Giuliano] Mignini always included witch fear in his murder theory, and only reluctantly relinquished it. As late as October 2008, a year after the murder, he told a court that the murder “was premeditated and was in addition a ‘rite’ celebrated on the occasion of the night of Halloween. A sexual and sacrificial rite [that] in the intention of the organizers … should have occurred 24 hours earlier” — on Halloween itself — “but on account of a dinner at the house of horrors, organized by Meredith and Amanda’s Italian flatmates, it was postponed for one day.”

Likewise, Candace Dempsey writes for the Seattle PI about the parallels between the Knox case and the West Memphis Three, down to the prosecutor’s obsession with sex and the occult:

In the Amanda Knox and West Memphis cases, even high-profile reporters at major networks cling to exciting crime theories, no matter how loony or baseless. … In Amanda’s case, tabloid journalists are of course the worst offenders–still enraptured by the satanic four-way drug-fueled orgy that made them so much money, even though it was just a sexual fantasy on the part of prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Independent experts have rejected the DNA that put the two college students at the crime scene.

There is also the matter that plenty of people celebrate rites on or near Halloween — Satanic or not — without killing anyone, because murder and human sacrifice are not part of their practices. In other words, even if Knox was a devout Satanist, she wouldn’t have been any more likely to murder than if she belonged to any other religion.

If you were Knox today, what would you do? Would you make an effort to clear your name? Or would you ignore the bad press, hoping it would eventually be forgotten?

Mentally ill killer may be released from German prison; what’s Satan got to do with it?

Daniel and Manuela Ruda, pictured during their 2001 trial. Daniel could soon be released from prison. Photo by ddp’s Kirsten Neumann.

A mentally disturbed man could soon be released from German prison after serving 15 years for the bloody slaying of a friend.

The London Evening Standard reported that Daniel Ruda, 35, will go before a parole board in Germany next week. There, he will find out whether he will be released early for good behavior.

Ruda and his wife, Manuela, were sentenced to prison in early 2002 for the murder of Frank Hackert. The newlyweds allegedly stabbed Hackert a number of times before drinking his blood. Reporters, then and now, latched onto the fact that the Rudas claimed they were vampires. Some, including the Evening Standard’s Allan Hall, have continued to call the couple “Satanic.”

Why?

Well, according to the Telegraph, “they said the devil told them to” kill their friend.

Daniel Ruda, a car parts salesman, and Manuela, had admitted the killing, but said they were not responsible because they were acting on the devil’s orders. “Kill, sacrifice, bring souls,” was how they described the command.

The couple said they had chosen “Hacki”, as they called him, for sacrifice because he was “so funny and would be the perfect court jester for Satan”.

Throughout the trial, the Rudas showed off, appearing in outlandish costumes, flashing their devil-horn signals and threatening witnesses.

In general, people who believe the Devil is telling them to kill someone qualify as psychotic — not Satanic. Fortunately, the judge in this case recognized that, and assigned Daniel and Manuela to different psychiatric units. Since then, Daniel has apparently become the librarian of a prison near Dortmund, Germany. That’s not enough information to tell whether his condition has stabilized. Manuela remains in prison for her participation in the crime.

Unfortunately, the Ruda’s flamboyant behavior during the trial made them poster children for the anti-Satanists, who like to hold up photos (particularly this one of Manuela) of them as proof that Satanism leads to violence and homicide.

Satanism, like just about every other faith, does not endorse, condone, or encourage harming others — let alone killing them. You can argue that if the Rudas didn’t want to be held up as such an example, they shouldn’t have behaved the way they did — either during their crime or during their trial. But how much impulse control and personal responsibility can we expect from two people who are so clearly mentally unbalanced? And what of the press’ responsibility to report in a fair and accurate manner?

Furthering the “Satanic” rallying cry, as the Evening Standard did, does nothing to clarify whether Daniel Ruda is back to good health and safe for release. It also confuses a potentially frightened public into believing that Satanism is to blame for what happened — and that young people who find a home in this particular faith are vulnerable to (or likely to) carry out the same kinds of crimes. This is unfair to Satanists, to the public, and to the parents of teens exploring such faiths.

Do you think Daniel Ruda should be released from jail? What kinds of treatment do you think he should have received during his imprisonment, if any?

Death metal on trial in Billings murder case

Prosecutors in Jeffery Todd Guy’s murder trial say he followed the occult. Or death metal. Whichever makes him look worse.

On March 20, Jeffery Todd Guy allegedly opened fire at the Billings, Montana home of Scott Maxson. Police say he fired his .45-caliber Mac-10 semiautomatic pistol at least six times, killing Maxson. Guy called the police the next morning to report a dead body in the alley behind his house. Two weeks ago, he told a Billings courtroom that he shot the man in self-defense.

In recent articles about Guy’s case, it isn’t clear how — or if — Guy and Maxson knew each other before the incident. These days, prosecutors and defense attorneys are more busy bickering about his personal interests anyway:

[Deputy County Attorney Dave] Carter also said that Guy led a “double life” revolving around his belief in the occult. While his mother and family were unaware of his satanic beliefs, Guy “prominently displayed idols and literature on the subject” in his home, Carter said in court records.

[Public Defender Christopher] Abbott argued that the items in Guy’s home were associated with Guy’s interest in rock music commonly known as “death metal,” which often uses images of Satan and the occult.

There is no connection, Abbott said, between Guy’s interest in music culture and his potential danger to the community.

Well, at least the defense attorney said that Guy’s taste in music has nothing to do with whether or not he committed the crime. But this whole back-and-forth poses a lot of potential problems. Among them:

1. The prosecutor managed to plant the idea that Guy is into the occult, and was somehow “leading a double life” by hiding it from his family. (If these items were openly displayed in his home, why didn’t his family know about them? Did they never visit?) Once again, this links the idea of “the occult” and violence/homicide in the minds of the public.

2. The defense brought up Guy’s interest in death-metal music. Even though the attorney sounds like he intended to make Guy’s music tastes a non-issue, now he has created an association between “death-metal fan” and “man on trial for murder.”

3. The reporter for the Billings Gazette repeated all this in his coverage of the court hearing, without much in the way of explanation. By being suggestive, and by not clarifying, he’s legitimizing what the attorneys are saying.

Meanwhile, as regular readers of this blog know, death-metal music doesn’t make anyone into a killer, nor does an interest in the occult. Whether or not Guy was acting in self-defense remains to be seen. Either way, Guy has a right to like whatever music he likes, and follow whatever faith he likes, without those interests being suspect if he’s ensnared in a criminal trial.

What if Guy had been a fan of opera? Or country music? Do you think it would have come up in court?

“Demonic drawing,” Slipknot album linked to grandparents’ murder

Kyle Smith, 17, is accused of killing his grandparents and setting their house on fire in Midwest City, Oklahoma.

Kyle Smith, a 17-year-old from Midwest City, Oklahoma, is behind bars after being arrested for allegedly murdering his grandparents, David and Rose Garrick, and then setting their house on fire March 23. Two of Smith’s friends, 18-year-old Dustin Martin and 17-year-old Jacob LeBlanc, are also in jail for allegedly helping cover up the crime, but much of the media focus has rested on Smith and the “evidence” found in the home he shared with his grandparents.

Among that evidence, according to Oklahoma’s News 9 broadcast, is a “demonic drawing,” hinted at in this video. Out of context, a “demonic drawing” means almost nothing: Was it a pentagram (as the broadcast suggests) or something else? (Not all pentagrams are “demonic.”) If so, how do we know which way it was pointing? Do we know if it was Smith’s? Did it have any other writing on it? Was it clear it had anything to do with the occult, or was it inspired by an album cover or other piece of art? Did Smith draw it? Was it hidden away, or was it scribbled on a school-book cover? And what does this have to do with the crimes he allegedly committed?

The newscaster in the video actually gets a few things right, probably more by dint of the fact that she had to produce something about this supposed “demonic drawing,” but didn’t have any information on the drawing itself: she went to someone who knew more than she did about occult symbols and instead had him talk about what it means if a teen has one of these in his/her bedroom. This someone is private investigator Robert Smart, who says he’s had “training on how to read these kinds of drawings.” (Hope his training isn’t from Don Rimer.) His descriptions of the various symbols is less than illuminating, but his encouragement that parents should talk to their kids about these things is spot-on.

Unfortunately, all this is hinged on Smith’s crime, creating the impression that the described “demonic symbol” had anything to do with the murders. (Though Smart does rightly point out that Satanists don’t generally commit murder.)

Another Oklahoma broadcaster, NewsChannel 4, doesn’t do much better:

Inside the walls of the burned home, investigators seized a demonic drawing, a heavy metal CD with a pentagram, along with a hatchet, a samurai sword, a dagger, knives and two gas cans.

… “A heavy metal CD with a pentagram.” That doesn’t really clarify things. Antimusic.dom dug deeper and learned that the album in question was by Slipknot, probably All Hope Is Gone, which features a nine-pointed star, or nonagram, not a pentagram. According to the band’s own Web site, each of the points on this nine-pointed star represents one of the members of the band. How is this relevant to the crime? How many other ways would the reporters like to get their facts wrong? The mind boggles.

So far, there’s been little on Smith’s actual mental state, or his relationship with his grandparents. Was he violent? Disturbed? Abused? Why was he living with his grandparents and not his parents? NewsChannel 4 does stick in one speculative line: “We don’t know why. There’s been questions about the psychological welfare of this 16-year-old suspect. That ‘s up to the experts, we have no idea,” said Chief Clabes. But that comes after this one, which has as little to do with the crimes as the “demonic drawing” or the Slipknot album:

“We’ve been told by residence [sic] in the area they’ve seen him dress in all black, Gothic. Well, we’ve been told they saw him in the backyard throwing daggers at the fence. We’ve been told he listens to heavy metal. That was his own admittance, that he does listen to heavy metal. Is that significant in this case? I don’t know. Does it mean anything in this case? I don’t know,” said Chief Clabes.

All of these comments trivialize the nature of this crime, whether Smith or someone else committed it. This was an awful, brutal homicide, likely committed either by someone in a deeply disturbed state or by someone pushed too far by trauma and circumstance. The fact that reporters continue to grasp at speculative straws — particularly when the suspect is a teenager, gets us no closer to understanding this crime — or any violent crime committed by a minor. And this is something we, as a society, both desperately want and desperately need to undersand.