While the incident is truly bizarre, the severity of the sentence is even more so. Masterminding a campaign of cutting the beards of people you disagree with on religious and maybe lifestyle issue surely is a naughty thing. But it is hardly the crime of the century.
If there ever is a perfect of example of unusual punishment, being put in the slammer for 15 years for beard cutting must be it.
What’s the legal justification for this? This seems utterly absurd.
“Followers of Mr. Mullet broke into homes, restrained men and women, and forcibly sheared their victims, sometimes with tools used to clip horse manes.”
So even if they didn’t cut off their beards, I see breaking and entering, assault and battery, and either kidnapping or unlawful imprisonment there. It’s just that adding the “convicted of cutting off beards” makes it a more interesting news story.
Being put into a prison is not cruel or unusual punishment. The sentence might seem unusual, but as others have pointed out, the actual crimes involved were more than the ‘cutting beards’ sound-bites.
Plus, he appears to have been the one who orchestrated the whole thing. The courts tend to give higher sentences to the ringleaders of criminal activities, because the ringleader is seen as responsible for all of the criminal acts committed at his instigation. The article indicates that his followers got lesser sentences.
Plus, the reason for the organized criminal activity is important. This wasn’t college frat pranks. This was a policy of concerted intimidation, in a small, close-knit community - very disruptive to the community.
Huh? You mean the days when people were executed for stealing horses? I’m a little confused about how multiple home invasions wouldn’t result in serious prison time in the olden days. Breaking into an occupied home is one of our more serious offenses.
As others have pointed out, this was not a sentence for mere beard-cutting. Here (PDF) is the indictment filed against Mullet. The full list of charges begins on page 4.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the crimes would have been ignored by the government and the Amish left to sort it out themselves. And the Amish would have preferred it that way. And the results would have probably been far worse.
I’m sure there will be an uproar in the Federal correctional system. Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia might think they’re badass. But they haven’t met those those Amish beard cutters yet.
Good heavens…I just read the actual charges. 15 years is NOT enough. Use of force and intimidation for the sexual procurments of women is the least of the charges. A very nasty group of people. They should also be banned for life from the Amish community.
So your contention is in the 1950s, when rape was still a death penalty offense for example, I could orchestrate a series of crimes in which we broke into multiple occupied homes to terrorize, assault, and detain individuals I’d be looking at three months of jail time?
The combination of breaking into a man’s house, tying him up and cutting his beard is somewhat unusual. So I really don’t know. But I have had worse things happen to me.