Main | Tuesday, March 13, 2012

OHIO: Amish Sect Seeks To Have Federal Hate Crimes Act Declared Unconstitional

In an Amish-on-Amish attack in Ohio last year, several men were assaulted and had their beards cut off, the ultimate insult in that community. Now charged with hate crimes, lawyers for the assailants are petitioning to overturn the federal Hate Crimes Act as unconstitutional.
The attorneys, who have asked a judge to toss the charges, argued in recently filed court documents that a beefed-up version of the hate crimes statute passed by Congress in 2009 uses a tenuous link to interstate commerce to allow federal officials to pursue cases normally left to state and local police. For instance, part of what prosecutors included as part of the indictments as a link to commerce was that the attackers hired a driver to travel to the attack locations and that the scissors they wielded in several of the cases where manufactured in New York. The lawyers also contend the crimes Mullet, 66, and the others are accused of were not motivated by prejudice or hatred of the Amish religion. They "are doctrine-based Old Order Amish beliefs regarding punishment for a variety of sins," according to the March 5 filing. The people charged and the victims are all Amish.

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