Posted on 09/21/2012 6:13:53 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
CLEVELAND — Amish bishop Samuel Mullet Sr. was convicted yesterday of federal hate crimes and conspiracy for exhorting followers to forcibly shear the hair and beards of those who opposed his breakaway Ohio sect.
Mullet’s three sons, his daughter and 11 other family members and followers in his ultra-strict Amish order 100 miles southeast of Cleveland also were convicted of conspiracy and hate crimes after a trial that attracted international attention.
The 66-year-old bishop could face life in prison for his crimes. U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster scheduled sentencing hearings for Jan. 24.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bridget Brennan said federal sentencing guidelines recommend a minimum of 17 1/2 years for the 15 other defendants, given that their crimes involved violence and kidnapping.
But defense attorneys said the judge has the discretion to sentence some of Mullet’s followers to as little as time already served in county jails.
A jury of seven men and five women announced the verdicts yesterday afternoon after deliberating for 37 hours over five days.
Defense attorney Edward Bryan, who represented Samuel Mullet during the three-week trial in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, said he was shocked by the jurors’ decision to convict his client and will appeal.
“There was very little — in fact, no — evidence connecting Sam Mullet to any of these matters,” Bryan said. “The government was successful in convincing the jury that he had a Svengali-like influence over these people.”
U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach said the shearing attacks warranted prosecution in federal court as hate crimes.
“The evidence was that they invaded their homes, physically attacked these people and sheared them almost like animals,” Dettelbach said during a news conference. “Our community and our nation must have zero tolerance for this type of religious intolerance. Religious-motivated violence will not be brushed aside and will not be tolerated.”
The case was the first in Ohio to make use of a landmark 2009 federal law that expanded government powers to prosecute hate crimes. Two weeks of testimony attracted widespread media attention, in part because of the unusual nature of the crimes and because of public curiosity about the historically reclusive and peaceful Amish society.
Federal prosecutors argued that Mullet, the religious and social leader of a breakaway settlement of 18 families in the Jefferson County farming community of Bergholz, considered himself a god and above the law.
Witnesses portrayed the bishop as a fire-and-brimstone preacher and iron-fisted autocrat who imposed strict, and often bizarre, discipline on his flock. He read and censored all incoming and outgoing mail, punished wrongdoers with spankings and confinement in chicken coops, and engaged in sexual relations with several of the young married women under the guise of marital counseling and absolution.
And when members of neighboring Amish communities opposed him, prosecutors said, he unleashed a band of renegades who waged a “campaign of terror” that included the shearing attacks.
The five raids, in the fall of 2011, were mostly carried out at night, with the victims rousted from bed and their beards and hair chopped off with horse-mane shears and battery-powered clippers. The attackers documented their roughshod barbering with a disposable camera.
The convictions hinged on prosecutors convincing jurors that the ritualistic cutting of beards and head hair rose above the level of a simple assault to that of a religiously motivated hate crime.
Defense attorneys called no witnesses. But they maintained that their clients acted out of love and compassion and sheared the hair and beards to compel the victims to return to a conservative Amish lifestyle.
Beards and long hair are sacred symbols of Amish followers’ devotion to God, and to cut them is humiliating. Defense attorneys said they expect their clients will be able to keep their long beards during their stays in federal prison.
During the testimony, the courtroom gallery typically filled with Amish observers, the men clad in denim and suspenders, the women in aprons and dresses. Supporters of the prosecution sat on one side of the aisle, supporters of the Bergholz clan on the other.
Amish returned yesterday for the reading of the verdicts.
Sam Mullet’s sister, Barbara Miller, who was a victim of a hair-cutting attack, clutched a jacket over her face as the judge read. She declined to talk afterward. Mullet’s wife, Martha, also declined to comment.
The defendants appeared grim, and their supporters in the visitors’ section remained quiet throughout the half-hour proceeding.
“It’s sad, sure,” said Mullet’s brother John, who lives apart from the Mullet compound and accompanied his sister Barbara to court nearly every day of the trial.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Nathan Miller, an Amish author from Evart, Mich., said the verdicts exposed an embarrassing aspect of Amish life atypical of the peaceful, rural plain folk. He said Mullet had “without a doubt” established a cult, citing his exercising of power and obedience over his flock and his use of sexual exploitation to exert his control.
....The case was the first in Ohio to make use of a landmark 2009 federal law that expanded government powers to prosecute hate crimes. Two weeks of testimony attracted widespread media attention, in part because of the unusual nature of the crimes and because of public curiosity about the historically reclusive and peaceful Amish society....
....The five raids, in the fall of 2011, were mostly carried out at night, with the victims rousted from bed and their beards and hair chopped off with horse-mane shears and battery-powered clippers. The attackers documented their roughshod barbering with a disposable camera. The convictions hinged on prosecutors convincing jurors that the ritualistic cutting of beards and head hair rose above the level of a simple assault to that of a religiously motivated hate crime.
I really hate the notion of ‘hate’ crimes.
If battery was committed, then battery is the crime.
The idea that some crimes deserve extra punishment because they were perpetrated upon on or by a certain demographic is repulsive. It is the converse of the American and Christian ideal that Justice is blind.
‘Hate crime’ is the less known but equally Orwellian equivalent of ‘thought crime’.
Samuel Mullet ordered followers to give haircuts to others.
Can’t make this stuff up.
Oh, THOSE Amish!
I think the point is that the government has extended it’s definition of hate crimes to include different belief systems and will probably continue to expand that definition to include religious belief systems with the exception of Islam of course. Treading in dangerous waters.
Hair club for Amish. Heh!
Absolutist religions inspire cults. With the absolutist, tyrannical leaders. The crazy builds up in the leader and the cult. Eventually the crazy breaks out into the open!
That’s the way the current AntiChrist administration is removing our freedoms one step at a time, incrementally. If they tried to do it all at once the know there would be an uprising. Throw the devil’s sidekick out of office on his ear this November.
Why is it not a hate crime when a black kicks the living crap out of a white peson???
‘Semper Fi’
Cheers...Chris
Electric hair clippers! A camera! What kink of Amish are they? The sin of modernity!
Amish invade your home and cut your hair .
Hippity-hoppity rappity-tappity cracky-wacky gangbangin’ thugs invade your home, steal your stuff, beat you up, might or might not kill you.
Muzzies invade your home and cut your head off. In the “way of Allah.” May or may not sodomize.
Diversity. So fine.
“kink of Amish” heh
Whats worse is that this case was in federal court. Really? spending resources over a forced haircut? I guess this case wasn’t offensive to “Holder’s people”.
The tough sentence doesn't bother me. The ideological groundwoprk being laid --- thoughttcrime, federalization of prosecution --- bothers me a lot. The "thought-crime" category is dangerous to us all.
The blackrobes bastar**s and their shysters making these laws need life for what they continue to do the “justice system.” Lawyers should be banned from holding any political office. Ask yourself, what group of professional pigs has brought us the DC empire, bankruptcy, and a breeding crowd of parasites on society?
....the men made a Hitler salute, said they were part of the Ku Klux Klan, and beat [Zachary Tennen, a 19-year-old sophomore at Michigan State University] unconscious, breaking his jaw in the process. While he was knocked out, one of them stapled the boy’s mouth shut while guests at the party watched....As East Lansing [police try to find the men who assaulted him, department spokesmen claim they don’t believe the attack was a hate crime, and are refusing to investigate it as such.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.