Boston, USA - A warden's decision to ban a convicted killer from preaching to fellow inmates violates his right to practice religion behind bars, the prisoner's attorney told a federal appeals court Wednesday.
Wesley Spratt, a maximum-security inmate in the state prison in Rhode Island, is serving a life sentence for the 1995 murder of a parking lot attendant in Providence. He said he preached in prison for about seven years after what he describes as a "calling" from God.
A new warden prohibited Spratt from preaching in the fall of 2003, with prison officials saying it was dangerous to give an inmate such a position of authority.
Spratt's attorney, Lynette Labinger, argued that her client's preaching was always supervised and never incited other inmates or posed a security problem.
"He did it weekly, he did it openly, he did it incident-free," Labinger told a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
Labinger said the federal Bureau of Prison permits inmates to preach if they are being supervised and suggested that other inmates at the state prison in Cranston are given positions of authority -- such as acting as a librarian or working on the food line.
But Patricia Coyne-Fague, an attorney for the state Department of Corrections, countered that those positions "don't involve an inmate standing before a group of inmates and expounding upon Scripture or any other work." She also said the prison was entitled to act pre-emptively to head off any potential security risks.
Spratt is arguing that the preaching ban violates a federal law passed in 2000 that affords prisoners certain rights in practicing their religion.
The law, known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, requires the government to show there is a compelling interest in infringing on an inmate's religious practices. It also must use the least restrictive means possible if it prohibits a prisoner's religious observances.
The appeals court did not indicate when it would rule. But the judges appeared skeptical of the corrections department's arguments, noting Spratt had preached for several years without causing a problem and suggesting the prison could have taken another, less restrictive approach short of an outright ban.
"It makes no sense to think that the prison is run without prisoners being given some sort of responsibility," Judge Sandra Lynch said.
Court papers filed on Spratt's behalf say he believes he has been called upon by God to preach to other Christians and encourage them to turn from sin. He preached to an inmate congregation at weekly Christian services -- either in the prison chapel or dining room -- that were supervised by clergy and were well-known to the prison administration, his lawyer said.
"There's no request here that Wesley Spratt run the services on his own or without anyone looking in," Labinger said.
A federal judge sided with the prison last June, calling the case "somewhat of close call" but saying the state had an interest in maintaining a safe prison. Spratt appealed the decision in a case that is backed by the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.