Posted on 03/22/2020 12:07:12 AM PDT by nickcarraway
WARNING: Some pictures in the following story may be disturbing for some viewers.
The remains of a mutilated animal left rotting in the street can be both disturbing to see and in some cases, illegal.
But law enforcement rarely pursues charges in these cases which are more common than you might think.
CASE IN THE ACREAGE
Dorcas “DJ” Web has lived in the acreage for nearly 30 years.
It’s an area she considered peaceful and quiet until she made a gruesome discovery down her street.
She saw four cardboard boxes; one placed on each corner of the intersection.
At first she thought someone was littering, but the formation of the boxes made Dorcas think this was something deliberate.
“Was it for good? Was it for evil? What was it?”
Her curiosity turned to disgust when she tipped over one of the boxes.
“There was a lamb leg,” she said. “When I went to the next box, there was another lamb leg.”
Each box contained a different quarter of the lamb.
“There were bones sticking out. It was bloody. It had a cute little cloven hoof. The hoof was cute – not the rest of it.”
Dorcas didn’t know what to make of it until she spoke to an officer from Animal Control who told her these were the remains of a religious animal sacrifice and that the practice is protected under the First Amendment.
But, where does the right to practice your religion cross the line and interfere with public safety by placing the remains of an animal sacrifice in a public place or on someone's private property?
SECRETIVE PRACTICE OF SANTERIA
Santeria is a highly secretive Afro-Caribbean religion that originated in Cuba during the 16th century according to Dr. Landon Frim, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University.
The I-Team attempted to speak to several Santeria practitioners, but no one agreed to an interview.
“People are not willing to speak openly about their membership in the Santeria community,” Dr. Frim explained.
The secrecy goes back to the religion’s early days, when plantation owners prohibited West African slaves from openly practicing Santeria.
Dr. Frim said, to this day, it is difficult to get information and statistics about people who practice Santeria, even though there are known Santeria churches and practitioners in South Florida.
Frim explained Santeria is a monotheistic faith that believes in a Creator God and Orishas, Saint-like intermediaries between the natural and supernatural world.
“To satiate, to adore, to birth into existence the Orishas, traditional people in this community believe there needs to be an element of blood, and that’s where animal sacrifice comes in,” explained Frim.
ANIMAL CONTROL’S EXPERIENCE
Palm Beach County Animal Control Captain Daisy Blakeman told us the department investigates cases of animal sacrifice regularly.
“It’s not shocking to those of us that work in Animal Control,” she said. “We see it quite often, and we see lots of variations.”
Director Dianne Sauve estimated those calls come in about once a month.
Dead chickens left at intersections and mutilated goats appear to be some of the more common cases around Palm Beach County.
Captain Blakeman reviewed the Animal Control Report about the lamb legs in the acreage, and said it sounds like a case involving Santeria to her.
“We have these boxes left at an intersection,” she said. “It does smack of some kind of religious ritual.”
She said law enforcement has to tread lightly in these kinds of cases.
“You want to be respectful of a person’s beliefs, and it’s a hard balance,” Captain Blakeman said.
“You don’t want to infringe on that person’s rights to express their religious beliefs, but you have to balance that out with what’s against the law.”
LEGAL QUESTIONS
In 1993, a Santeria church in Hialeah won a landmark Supreme Court case that established animal sacrifice as a protected religious exercise.
The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye took the City of Hialeah to court because it passed an ordinance forbidding the “unnecessary killing of an animal in a public or private ritual not for the primary purpose of food consumption.”
The Supreme Court found the ordinance violated the Constitution.
But, what about the health safety issue - can an animal sacrifice be left out in public?
The animal control officer said the rotting corpse poses a public safety issue, and there are laws on the book that appear to prohibit it.
According to Florida Statute 823.041, a person should dispose of an animal carcass by burning or burying it at least two feet below ground.
The statute goes on to say that it is a second-degree misdemeanor to dump an animal carcass on any public road or right-of-way.
Despite this state public nuisance law, Captain Blakeman said these cases are rarely prosecuted.
Blakeman said it’s difficult to build a case because witnesses do not usually come forward – making it nearly impossible to know if the animal was killed humanely, who left the sacrifice, and why.
If someone does admit to leaving the animal remains, Blakeman said the most they could pursue is a citation for improper disposal of an animal.
But it doesn’t happen often.
Blakeman said animal control does not prioritize these kinds of cases because they are “swamped” with other, more pressing life-safety concerns daily.
Dr. Frim said these cases do not typically end in charges because of a federal law that trumps state and local ordinances: The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“The scales are significantly tipped in favor of religious practices,” he explained. “It tips the scales in favor of controversial and what would otherwise be illegal religious practices that go against secular law.”
Florida enacted the RFRA in 1998.
The Supreme Court continues to hear cases that apply to the act, most recently in the landmark 2014 Hobby Lobby case.
How religious freedoms interact with other individual’s rights is an ongoing and complex legal debate which, like the lamb legs, just showed up in Dorcas Web’s neighborhood.
“I’ll just be careful if I see any more boxes,” she said.
To cause an innocent animal to experience extreme pain and terror in the loss of its life is a practice somehow protected by the U.S. Constitution? Where the hell do we get these demonic judges from, who hide behind religion as an excuse to justify horrific human behavior? Whatever did their parents do to them? (I toned it down. It was a lot worse a few minutes ago).
Maybe I should never go south of Daytona Beach?
“There was a lamb leg,” she said. “When I went to the next box, there was another lamb leg.”
They’re good with light brown gravy
You forgot the mint jelly.
CC
lol
That fits better.
Haitian practice. Some are Cuban “Santaria”.
You moan and groan over how “a pretty, cute, little lamb could be so slaughtered”, right?
Do you inhabit a pew on a given day, and feel nothing, when you hear the story of how a man was flailed unmercilessly, and with his state, made to walk, drippping blood all the way, shouldering a splintering piece of wood, and finally nailed to that wood, and speared?
Folks sacrificed that lamb, I believe, in their working to abate this virus, considering the boxes were put in “the four corners of the world”.
Not just Santeria, baby, but blood magick is recognized throughout Paganism.
If they just stuck with possums, skunks and coons I wouldn’t have a problem.....
Unmercilessly? Really?
Occasionally there is a small animal sacrificed at our local cemetery. The workers find it.
Maybe that animal was going to spill some information about the Clinton’s “charity”.
A Roman cat o nine tails, with either small weights or cups, when removing flesh when the body is whipped, is not merciful.
Parse the word and see what was being brought forward:
Un: NOT
mercy: gracious/kind/gentle
Less: of lower quantity
merciless: without mercy
UNmerciless: not without mercy, merciful.
In other words, your invented word is just as grating and inaccurate as such gems as:
irredundant
irregardless
two words that are guaranteed to bring out the spelling/grammar libertarians in all of us.
Touche’ count it my dialect
It was a perfectly cromulent word!
Considering the posted discussion of this subject was prior to our national decreed hibernation, I’ll accept that.
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