Appellate court overturns Amish hate-crime convictions

Staff/wire report

CINCINNATI

An appeals-court panel Wednesday overturned the hate-crime convictions of 16 Amish men and women in beard- and hair-cutting attacks on fellow members of their faith in Ohio, ruling that religion wasn’t their driving motive.

A 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel sided with arguments brought by attorneys for the Amish, convicted two years ago in five attacks in 2011.

The attacks were in apparent retaliation against Amish who had defied or denounced the authoritarian style of Sam Mullet Sr., leader of the Bergholz community in eastern Ohio.

One of the attacks occurred in Mesopotamia Township in northern Trumbull County.

“We respectfully disagree with the two judges who reversed the defendants’ hate-crime convictions based on a jury instruction,” said Mike Tobin, spokesman for the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, which prosecuted the case in Cleveland.

“We remain in awe of the courage of the victims in this case, who were subject to violent attacks by the defendants. We are reviewing the opinion and considering our options,” he added.

Tobin did not specifically say in an email whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office would seek reconsideration by all 16 federal appellate judges sitting together or appeal Wednesday’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a deeply divided decision, two of the three judges on the 6th circuit panel concluded that the jury received incorrect instructions about how to weigh the role of religion in the attacks. They also said prosecutors should have had to prove that the assaults wouldn’t have happened but for religious motives.

“When all is said and done, considerable evidence supported the defendants’ theory that interpersonal and intra-family disagreements, not the victims’ religious beliefs, sparked the attacks,” the judges wrote.

They said it was unfair to conclude that “because faith permeates most, if not all, aspects of life in the Amish community, it necessarily permeates the motives for the assaults in this case.”

Church leaders, “whether Samuel Mullet or Henry VIII, may do things, including committing crimes or even creating a new religion, for irreligious reasons,” they wrote.

Mullet has served nearly three years of his 15-year sentence, while seven other men in the community are serving between five and seven years in prison. The other eight Amish convicted in the attacks either already served one year in prison and have returned to their communities or are about to be released from two-year sentences.