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The Case of the Human Sacrifice

I ran across a really interesting article in the 1981 edition of the Arizona Law Review the other day. (And no, I don’t regularly read law journals. I just hang out with some law students.) It’s part science fiction, part court brief.

It’s a court briefing from the Supreme Court of the New States in the year 2383. After the old US disintegrated as a result of a economic decline and a simultaneous development of fundamentally conflicting religious and political groups (it’s up for debate as to whether one caused the other, or they just happened at the same time), a new republic was formed, and instead of a consitution, the guiding document for their laws of the land are principles.

Much like our First Amendment, the New States’ first principle is “Neither Congress nor the individual legislatures of the states shall make a law prohibiting free exercise of religion or respecting an establishment of religion.” Freedom of speech is covered in the second principle.

This particular case, “State v. Williams” concerns a prosecution against James Williams, the head priest and “prophet on earth” of the New Whole Earth Church, a 150 year-old primitive pantheistic church that has gained a recent popularity. Williams is responsible for committing the murder by throat-slitting of Sarah and Roger Reinhart, two twentysomething members of the church who submitted to ritualistic human sacrifice. From the briefing, this is what occured:

The sacrifice occurs high in the mountains in the late fall once every seven to ten years. To the believer, the ritual symbolizes, affirms, and embodies the oneness of man and the earth and the prescense of the spirit of God in both. Two members of the church, one male and one female, are selected by the prophet to be the central parties in the “most holy act of solidarity with the earth and God.”

The briefing has a lengthy detail of what happens, but here is the basic rundown:

• The two victims participation are, according to Williams, “purely and totally voluntarily.”
• They are married to each other, and live for a week in a cabin in the woods.
• On the eighth day, WIlliams and other high priests come and give them a tranquilizer and a muscle relaxant.
• They are lead around in the woods, praying and talking with Williams, until they arrive at a tree in a clearing.
• A bunch of people gather round and pray and chant while Williams slits their throat.

In order to establish guilt, the court must prove that the first principle is being violated, which was established because “in matters of religion, we do not consent to be governed by the political mechanisms elaborated in the body of our Restored Constitution.”

In a 6-3 decision, the supreme court decides to exonerate Williams. Chief Justice Goodhart wrote this in his decision:

True, the harm in this case before us is significantly clear and tangible: death to two healthy young adults. Not only was there a high probability the threatened harm would occur, it did occut and prices to recur.

…

The Reinharts’ consent circles the harm back, contains it within a willing group, and thus shields society from the kind of harm reaction to which poses a serious threat to social cohesion. Having determined that the action in question was motivated by sincere religious belief, and having also determined that the harm resulting from that action does not pose the type of ultimate threat to our society required before the state may pierce the strong exemption created by the first principle, we must conclude that defendant’s actions were privileged under the free exercise clause of the first principle.

The document also gave the dissenting view, which is the one I tend to agree with, as would most of our readers, I presume. They accused Justice Goodhart of being an idealogue, that his decision is “a pleasure to behold in the mind, but a disaster if constructed in the real world.” It disagreed with the opinion that the ritual doesn’t put society in danger. They refute the claims that the two young adults were operating independently and rationally (which was apparently established by independent psychiatrists before the rital was carried out), and moreover, made this convincing argument:

A decision not to attend college can be revised by a decision ten years later to do so; decisions to be a Catholic, a doctor, a priest, a drunkard, all can be changed; even the decision to amputate a limb, although it cannot be undone, can be ameliorated to a significant extent with an artificial limb, training, and effort. There is no going back from a decision to be dead. At ages 22 and 25 the Reinharts had sufficient faith in and enthusiasm for the New Whole Earth Church to unreservedly anser James Williams’ request for their lives. At ages 35 or 40 would they have decided similarly?

They also argue that the crime committed is against society, not against the victims or their families. Society has an interest in the lives if the Reinharts, and the law “has not delegated to the Reinharts the power or right to waive that interest.”

So what sort of commentary is this fake case making about today’s society or legal system? On its surface, it’s pretty easy to see where the inherent conflict lay — as the article itself says, “[t]hus, we have two conflicting threats: (1) Extreme toleration poses a real threat to our social fabric. (2) Imposition on religious beliefs poses a real threat to our social fabric.”

Is this making a criticism of some of the harmful religious rituals out there today? Fasting, self-mortification, ritual suicide, etc. are harmful to the willing participants, but not necessarily to society as a whole. I think what this article took for granted was that the Reinharts were thinking rationally. Sure, they were examined by psychiatric professionals. They had reasons for participating in this sacrifice, but were those reasons logical? I think more attention should have been paid to Williams and his methods of preaching or practicing his religion. To what lengths did he go to persuade this couple to allow themselves to be killed? Just as those in Jonestown were convinced by Jim Jones to commit suicide, so Williams’ could have employed similar tactics to show the Reinharts that this was the logical thing to do.

Please, let me know what you think below. What did you think of the decision? If you need more information, sound off below, and I’ll try to provide it based on what I can find in this brief.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed by an individual contributor to this blog are not necessarily shared by all members of FreeThought Fort Wayne. That is what makes this organization so interesting. Commenters on the FreeThought Fort Wayne blog are expected to abide by our comment policy. About the author:  Andy Welfle is a marketing professional in a non-profit arts organization by day, and a net junkie, an Apple fanboy, and a freethinker by night. Follow him on twitter: twitter.com/awelfle. | Read more from this author

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