August 17, 2008

MIAMI – A year after practitioners of ritual animal sacrifices were held at gunpoint and detained for hours by Coral Gables police, Miami-Dade police plan to remind officers that federal and state laws protect people’s freedom of religion.

Animal sacrifice and religious ritual have intertwined for thousands of years. The practice remains integral to Santería, an Afro-Cuban religion that has many adherents in the United States, particularly in Florida.

In 1987, when the Santería Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye announced plans to open in Hialeah, Florida, the city reacted by passing a set of ordinances banning animal sacrifice. The church sued and the issue of whether the ritual killing of animals constituted protected religious expression eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.

Last year, Coral Gables police raided a home where practitioners of the Santeria religion were slaughtering goats, chickens and pigeons. As a result, next year’s Miami-Dade police handbook will include a note about how to respond to calls about such activities.

Pet Pulse obtained a copy of the memo that was sent to officers. It starts with a reminder that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides freedom of religion.

The memo then refers to the 1993 Supreme Court decision in the case of Lukumi Babalu Inc. vs. Hialeah. The court found that the city of Hialeh’s ordinances aimed at stopping animal sacrifice were unconstitutional.

Officers determining that animals were killed during a religious ritual are then instructed by the memo to first determine whether excessive noise has occurred.

“This crime is a misdemeanor and must occur in the officer’s presence,” the memo states.

The memo says the officers should then determine whether excessive parking has taken place due to a large gathering.

When Pet Pulse requested an interview with an authority to explain the memo, a Miami-Dade police spokesperson responded by email, saying, “Unfortunately, we are not going to have a representative available for an interview.”

In a paper he wrote this year, entitled, Animal Sacrifice and the First Amendment, Pace University Law Professor David Cassuto addressed the impact of the Supreme Court’s 1993 decision on the ability of the police to enforce animal cruelty laws.

“By classifying the animal sacrifice laws as failed anti-cruelty statutes and then invalidating them on First Amendment grounds,” Cassuto wrote, “the Court jeopardized future attempts to legislate animal protection laws, even when such laws only incidentally impact religious practices.”

New Jersey State SPCA Corporal Al Peterson says he has handled animal sacrifice cases involving Santeria and similar religions since the 1970s, and is considered a national authority on the subject.

In New Jersey, officers investigating possible religious animal sacrifice need to ask one primary question, according to Peterson: Did needless animal cruelty occur, in conjunction with Title 4, the state’s animal cruelty statute?

If animal cruelty occurred, any resulting offenses and charges are no different, Peterson says, than in any other case not involving religious expression.

“In an animal is killed for food, it’s not against the law,” Peterson said of New Jersey’s standards. “But at the same time, if an animal is killed in a ritualistic way, and not used for food, and basically tossed off to the side and discarded, that becomes the threshold between what is the basis of religious freedom and needless cruelty.”

Black dogs and black cats are sometimes sacrificed in the name of religion, Peterson says.

“These are Afro-Caribbean religious belief systems,” said Peterson, who calls instances of animal sacrifice “very prevalent.”

The carcasses of animals sacrificed in rituals, Peterson says, are typically disposed of in a variety of places.

“Parks, reservations, along the side of the road, in cemeteries, along railroad crossings, things that would be befitting of the spirits and the religious gods and spirits that they worship,” Peterson said.

Babalu have been known to eat the animals they sacrifice, such as in a stew, and then bury their bones and other remains, Peterson says.

“It’s very hard to make arrests,” Peterson said. “Because many of the sacrifices are done within people’s homes of the Santeros, which are the holy men, the priests. And then after the ceremony is over, someone within the congregation is given a chore, or a duty to place the sacrificed animals either in a cemetery or near a roadway or near a railroad.

“Wherever the Santero priest feels is befitting to the saints. To appease them, to make them happy, to grant them the wishes for which the animals have been sacrificed in the first place.”

Having done extensive interviews and research on animal sacrifice, Peterson says the use of animals is merely an option, not a religious requirement.

“Animals do not have to be used,” he said. “You can do it to a fruit, to a vegetable, an herb, a spice. Animal cruelty in Santeria is not a true requirement. The Santeros actually use this as a stronger point.”

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