CLEVELAND (AP) — The ringleader in hair- and beard-cutting attacks on fellow Amish in Ohio has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Sixty-seven-year-old Samuel Mullet Sr. was sentenced today in Cleveland federal court. Judge Dan Aaron Polster also was to sentence 15 of Mullet's extended family members.
The 10 men and six women were convicted last year in five attacks in Amish communities in 2011. One of the attacks occurred in Mesopotamia in Trumbull County.
Prosecutors say the attacks were retaliation against Amish who had defied or denounced Mullet's authoritarian style. They sought a life term.
Mullet's lawyer calls it an internal matter that didn't rise to a hate crime. The attorney had asked for a sentence of two years or less.
Amish believe the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards once they marry. Cutting it would be offensive to Amish.
Comments
In pronouncing his vicious sentence, the highly biased federal judge claimed Mullet "trampled on the U.S. Constitution". If anyone is guilty of that crime, it is the judge, since Americans (and that most certainly includes the Amish) are constitutionally protected from "cruel and unusual punishment", something that a 15-year prison sentence is for an elderly devoutly Christian bishop who cut no one's hair and hates no one. This is an American tragedy and an ugly travesty of justice. The judge should be impeached.
A good and just sentence for this Amish thug and criminal.
He is not a devoutly Christian person. Other reports said that he forced married women to sleep with him for "marital counseling", searched through and censored the victims mail (a federal crime), and punished those who disagreed with him to time in a chicken coop.
May this cult leader rot in jail the rest of his life.