A federal appeals court Tuesday ordered a lower court judge to reconsider a white separatist inmate's bid to hold group worship in prison, saying the state needs to better justify its barring of such gatherings.
A three-judge 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel said the state Department of Corrections' rejection of Michael Murphy's request for group worship was "reasonably" related to security concerns, given worries about inciting inflammatory rhetoric.
But the 8th Circuit found that the state failed to aptly prove that limiting the southwest Missouri man's religious practices amounted to the "least-restrictive" way to prevent racial violence at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron.
"We do not require evidence that racial violence has in fact occurred in the form of a riot, but we do require some evidence that (the state prison system's) decision was the least restrictive means necessary to preserve its security interest," the 8th Circuit's Roger Wollman wrote for the group.
Murphy argued that communal worship is important to his membership as part of the Christian Separatist Church Society, a group that holds as a tenet that its members must all be white "because they are uniquely blessed by God and must separate themselves from all non-Caucasian persons," Wollman wrote.
"Whether Murphy can establish the truth of these allegations and the existence of a substantial burden on the exercise of his religion is a matter to be determined by the district court ... following a trial on the merits of this issue," Wollman wrote.
Scott Holste, a spokesman for the Missouri Attorney General's Office, which represents the state in the matter, said "we're looking at the ruling and determining our next course of action."
Under federal law and U.S. Supreme Court decisions, correctional institutions may not prohibit the exercise of inmates' religious freedom, as long as the practice of the recognized religion does not compromise the safety of other inmates or the staff.
Missouri's prison system let Murphy and other members of his church worship privately but not as a group, calling such limits "necessary to preserve security and to reduce the likelihood of racial violence, which, according to prison officials, easily can be fueled by racial separation and inflammatory rhetoric," Wollman wrote.
"We find that the decision not to grant (Murphy's group) worship rights was rationally connected to MDOC's legitimate interest in safety and security," Wollman said, adding that "security is particularly important in dealing with group activities because of the potential for riots and the extensive damage resulting therefrom."
Still, Wollman wrote, the state "must do more than merely assert a security concern."
Murphy, 55, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life behind bars in the alleged racially motivated slaying of Clinton Tubbs - also known as Taco Munsen - in 1977 outside a Joplin bar.
He was paroled in 1992 but was arrested in mid-1994 by police who raided his Joplin home after an informant reported Murphy was plotting "to kill a Jew," an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant suggested.
Authorities reportedly seized methamphetamine-making chemicals and equipment, numerous semiautomatic rifles and pistols, a shotgun and two machine guns, among other things.
Police said they also found membership cards for white-supremacist groups, and writings that espoused hatred of blacks, Jews and gays, The Joplin Globe has reported.
In that case, Murphy pleaded guilty in late 1994 to federal charges that he tried to make meth, used a firearm in drug trafficking and unlawfully used two machine guns. He was sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison.
Last October, a three-judge 8th Circuit panel restored Missouri inmate Lance Pounder's lawsuit demanding religious use of an American Indian sweat lodge, suggesting that the killer serving a life sentence perhaps deserved more time to make his case.
Sweat lodges are used in some American Indian religious ceremonies to purify the spirit. Participants sit within an enclosed structure and pray while water is poured over fire-heated rocks during a ritual that can involve a shovel and garden rake.