Santeria priest Ernesto Pichardo thought it was a good thing when fellow members of the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye began to leave the bodies of sacrificed chickens near the trees and bushes of Hialeah, Fla., the congregation's hometown, during the 1980s.
Others did not. The City Council in the city of 240,000 people, 11 miles northwest of Miami, rejected the church's contention that the ritual scatterings were a vital part of the Santeria religion and of the Afro-Cuban culture on which it is based. The city prosecuted the church under a law banning animal sacrifices that stood until 1993, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down as religious discrimination.
The sacrifices continue, although Pichardo says church members still are occasionally hassled by authorities.
"I learned one thing," says Pichardo, who as an orite, or special priest, is empowered to conduct the sacrifices. "When you bring something forward that is outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, the dominant culture is going to cause you problems."
Immigrants with roots in Africa, Asia and other non-Western cultures are winding up in America's courts after being charged with crimes for acts that would not be offenses in their home countries. In recent years, U.S. courts have been asked to decide the fates of defendants involved in animal sacrifices, ritual mutilations and other customs of foreign cultures.
Some legal analysts and academics say the phenomenon should lead U.S. courts to allow defendants from non-Western backgrounds to raise a "cultural defense" when they are charged with certain crimes. Legal traditionalists blanch at the idea, and courts here traditionally have been reluctant to allow such defenses.
"We say that as a society we welcome diversity, and in fact that we embrace it," says Alison Dundes Renteln, a political science professor at the University of Southern California and author of The Cultural Defense, a book that examines the influence of such cases on U.S. courts. "In practice, it's not that easy."
Recent cases bear that out:
• In Fresno in 1995, Thai Chia Moua, a Hmong shaman originally from Laos, ordered a German shepherd puppy beaten to death on his front porch while he chanted over its body. Moua later explained that he wanted the puppy's soul to hunt down an evil spirit that was tormenting his wife. He pleaded guilty to animal cruelty. He was sentenced to probation and community service.
• In San Mateo, Calif., in 2000, Taufui Piutau was arrested for driving under the influence of kava tea, a mild euphoric popular in his native Tonga. A hung jury led to a mistrial.
• Chewers of khat, a leaf grown in East Africa and Yemen that produces a caffeine-like stimulant buzz, have been prosecuted in Michigan, New York, Georgia, Connecticut and Minnesota since the mid-1990s. Khat is legal in Great Britain, but the U.S. government classifies it as a controlled substance in the same category as LSD and Ecstasy.
• In Sanford, N.C., in 2003, city officials banned the slaughter of goats and other farm animals. Mexican agricultural workers who had settled in the town had begun killing goats for backyard barbecues and nailing their heads to nearby trees.
• In Lawrenceville, Ga., in March, Ethiopian immigrant Khalid Adem was charged with child cruelty after his 4-year-old daughter was found to have undergone female circumcision. The practice, in which portions of the female genitals are removed, is condemned by the United Nations and is banned under a 1995 U.S. law, but it is common in some African cultures.
Civil lawsuits
Culture clashes also are producing civil lawsuits that run in the other direction: Recently arrived immigrants have filed claims against airlines and fast-food restaurants over conduct that was offensive in the immigrants' cultures.
In 1988, the parents of Jasbir Singh, a Sikh, won $400,000 in court from Air Illinois after Singh, 26, was killed in a plane crash. An Illinois court ruled that the family was entitled to a larger-than-usual amount because Sikh custom would have required Singh to care for them in their old age.
Cultural claims have worked on occasion. In 1999, Mukesh Rai, a Carpenteria, Calif., pharmacist who is a vegetarian, accepted an undisclosed sum from Taco Bell after he mistakenly was served a beef burrito. Rai, a Hindu who had sued for $144,000, claimed that he was offended on cultural and religious grounds. He said the incident led him to consult a psychiatrist and to journey to India for a purifying bath in the Ganges River. Similar lawsuits by non-religious vegetarians usually fail, legal analysts say.
U.S. courts have dealt with similar pressures before.
In the early 20th century, Renteln says, Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Catholics from Italy brought religious and cultural practices that clashed with U.S. customs. Practices such as contracted or underage marriages, she says, were not protected under U.S. law and largely were eliminated.
Renteln wants courts to recognize what she calls America's "evolving definition of diversity." She says cultural defenses should be considered when determining guilt. But she does not say that those who commit culture-based crimes should always be found not guilty.
"Courts can judge on a case-by-case basis," Renteln says. "For instance, they could rule that it's OK for a Sikh man to wear a kirpan (a ceremonial dagger worn on or under the clothes) without endorsing female genital mutilation."
Legal traditionalists reject that notion. Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a conservative group, says that permitting cultural defenses would lead to a "legal relativism" in which "what's a crime for one person isn't for his neighbor. ... The system we have is the best we can do to allow cultural differences without beating down basic human rights."
Religious aspect important
Courts have long been reluctant to accept cultural defenses. Exceptions have come when groups have been able to argue that their religious as well as cultural rights have been violated.
In a case now before a U.S. appeals court, Albuquerque-based adherents of Uniao de Vegetal, a Brazilian religion, are claiming that restricting their access to the ayahuasca root violates a 1993 U.S. law that protects exotic religious practices. Tea brewed from the root produces a dreamlike state that is essential to their religion, the adherents say. The group won in federal trial court; the U.S. government has appealed.
Occasionally, lawyers have persuaded judges to go easy on defendants from other cultures.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1989, Chinese-born Dong Lu Chen received probation for beating his wife to death with a claw hammer after she confessed to adultery. Chen's attorney, Stewart Orden, argued that the shame Chen felt was the result of his Chinese upbringing, and that it fed his frenzy.
"It was as much of a cultural explanation as cultural defense," says Orden, who says he has not used the strategy since the Chen case.
"Culture may not excuse (a crime), but it can certainly shed light on things we may have difficulty understanding. Why shouldn't a court listen?