Oppressor
06-20-2008, 04:38 AM
Link (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/06/19/inmate_wins_case_vs_state_over_diet/?mj)
Fourteen years ago, Henry K. Boateng was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a Worcester jury convicted him of beating his 5-week-old son to death and viciously attacking the baby's mother.
more stories like thisNow, Boateng, who has changed his name to Daniel Yeboah-Sefah and identifies himself as a Buddhist, has won a significant legal victory: A federal judge found that the state prison system violated his civil rights by denying him a vegan diet.
US Chief District Judge Mark L. Wolf concluded that the system violated a 2000 federal statute that protects religious freedom in prison. In a judgment entered Tuesday, Wolf ordered the head of the system, beginning Friday, to provide the inmate at the Old Colony Correctional Center at Bridgewater with a vegan diet that hews to his religious beliefs.
Although the prison system had offered Yeboah-Sefah a standard vegetarian diet, he has spent nearly a decade unsuccessfully seeking a vegan diet that excludes all animal products, including eggs and milk products.
Yeboah-Sefah's lawyer, Beverly B. Chorbajian, said her client was pleased by the decision, which Wolf reached following a nonjury trial.
"The statute is designed to protect these people who are stuck in institutionalized settings," said Chorbajian, a Worcester lawyer. "We're all free to change our behavior or do things to accommodate our own religious practices. They are not."
Steve Kenneway, president of the 4,500-member state correction officers' union, condemned the lawsuit as an example of when inmates "manipulate the system."
"How does a person's religious diet become a priority with what goes on in the prison system?" he said. "I'm shocked that it got to a federal court. Religious rights are very important, but this is an inmate who murdered his child."
<snip>
Cruelty to animals is bad. Cruelty to niglets is good. This nigger agrees:
http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2008/06/18/1213845964_2415/539w.jpg
Fourteen years ago, Henry K. Boateng was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a Worcester jury convicted him of beating his 5-week-old son to death and viciously attacking the baby's mother.
more stories like thisNow, Boateng, who has changed his name to Daniel Yeboah-Sefah and identifies himself as a Buddhist, has won a significant legal victory: A federal judge found that the state prison system violated his civil rights by denying him a vegan diet.
US Chief District Judge Mark L. Wolf concluded that the system violated a 2000 federal statute that protects religious freedom in prison. In a judgment entered Tuesday, Wolf ordered the head of the system, beginning Friday, to provide the inmate at the Old Colony Correctional Center at Bridgewater with a vegan diet that hews to his religious beliefs.
Although the prison system had offered Yeboah-Sefah a standard vegetarian diet, he has spent nearly a decade unsuccessfully seeking a vegan diet that excludes all animal products, including eggs and milk products.
Yeboah-Sefah's lawyer, Beverly B. Chorbajian, said her client was pleased by the decision, which Wolf reached following a nonjury trial.
"The statute is designed to protect these people who are stuck in institutionalized settings," said Chorbajian, a Worcester lawyer. "We're all free to change our behavior or do things to accommodate our own religious practices. They are not."
Steve Kenneway, president of the 4,500-member state correction officers' union, condemned the lawsuit as an example of when inmates "manipulate the system."
"How does a person's religious diet become a priority with what goes on in the prison system?" he said. "I'm shocked that it got to a federal court. Religious rights are very important, but this is an inmate who murdered his child."
<snip>
Cruelty to animals is bad. Cruelty to niglets is good. This nigger agrees:
http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2008/06/18/1213845964_2415/539w.jpg