Minister wins right to curse judge

Last week a Michigan appeals court ruled that a minister had the right to hurl at a judge biblical curses that had landed him in jail.

From RNS:

The appeals court unanimously decided the Rev. Edward Pinkney’s rights to free speech were violated when he was sentenced to jail for writing a commentary criticizing his trial judge.

In 2007, Pinkney was convicted for paying people $5 to vote in a recall election for a congressional seat in Michigan’s 6th District that he lost. He warned that the Lord would smite the judge who sentenced him to probation with “consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation and with extreme burning,” referring to a passage in Deuteronomy.

The black minister from Benton Harbor, Mich., also called Judge Alfred Butzbaugh “dumb” and a “racist” in the commentary published in a Chicago-based populist newspaper.

Pinkney argued the judge encroached on his First Amendment rights when he sentenced him to prison for three to 10 years in June 2008.

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