Posted by Eugene Volokh:
"Anger Over 'Ramadan' Trial Delay":
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_09_07-2008_09_13.shtml#1220917949
[1]BBC reports:
A row has broken out in France after a court postponed a trial,
apparently because it was to take place during the holy Muslim
month of Ramadan.
Critics say the decision is a breach of France's strict separation
of religion and state.
The trial of seven men for armed robbery was due to start on 16
September in Rennes.
But last week the court agreed to a request from a lawyer for one
of the accused to put it off until January....
[The lawyer for one defendant], a Muslim, would have been fasting
for two weeks and thus, he said, be in no position to defend
himself properly.
He would be physically weakened and too tired to follow the
arguments as he should....
The government's Minister for Urban Affairs, Fadela Amara, herself
a Muslim, said it was a "knife wound" in the principle of a secular
republic ....
The far right leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, for his part, said the
French justice system had reached a new low....
(Note that the prosecutor denies the trial was postponed because of
Ramadan, but others question the denial.)
Here's my thinking, at least as to similar questions that might arise
in the U.S.:
(1) Generally speaking, the justice system allows a considerable range
of modest delays for the convenience of the lawyers and of judges. In
principle, I would think that a brief delay for a couple of weeks in
order to accommodate a defendant's religious beliefs would be quite
sensible. Certainly that's true for delays of a few days, if the
concern is that the trial would fall on a defendant's -- or a
witness's -- holy day, such as Yom Kippur or some similar Muslim
holiday. If there's enough advance notice, then this shouldn't cause
much trouble at all, and neither would it unduly interfere with the
public's or the victims' interest in speedy justice. And if
prosecutors don't object, then this seems little different from the
sorts of scheduling delays that are pretty common in trials,
especially when the prosecution and the defense agree.
(2) A delay of over three months is potentially more troubling.
Witnesses' recollections may suffer even over those three months
(especially if the trial would otherwise have been quite close in time
to the crime). The victims may have to spend more time dwelling on the
coming trial. And if the defendants are out on bail (not clear whether
these one are) such a long delay may give them a material unfair
advantage, since lots of us, religious or otherwise, would rather have
an extra three months of freedom now than three months of freedom
later. (True, some defendants may want closure as much as the victims
do, but many don't, and would happily put off their prison term, again
if they're out on bail.)
Much of the delay here of course has to do with the court's schedule.
But when you move things around on short notice -- and it looks like
there was short notice here, though I don't see why -- you'll
certainly run up against other trials or other constraints on the
lawyers or the witnesses, and you'll foreseeably have to put things
off for some months.
(3) I've never fasted for a month, even just during the daylight
hours. But it would surprise me if not eating from dawn until sunset
-- while still being able to eat from sunset to dawn -- would leave
people so weak that they can't follow the arguments at trial and help
their lawyers as necessary. Presumably Muslims work normal jobs during
Ramadan, and manage to do just fine, I take it because they can fill
up at night and before dawn and therefore suffer modest discomfort
more than debilitating weakness and fatigue. Perhaps this particular
defendant has a special medical condition that exacerbates the effect
of the daytime fast, but I saw no evidence of this in the news
stories. So it looks to me like the case for the religious
accommodation here is fairly weak, unlike a situation where a person
has a religious belief requires him to spend all of one day in
religious services.
(4) All this having been said, such a reaction in the U.S. would
strike me as out of proportion to the problem, especially given the
pretty routine ways in which criminal trials are often postponed, and
not just for a few days but for months. (If in France there's a
longstanding tradition against most postponements, I might take a
different view as to this case.) The problem isn't that religious
accommodations in the judicial system are somehow wrong; even a
secular system, it seems to me, should at times accommodate the
religious beliefs of its religious citizens. Rather, it's that this
particular accommodation might cause too long a delay, and the
asserted justification for the accommodation might be overstated.
Thanks again to [2]Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the
pointer.
References
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7602540.stm
2. http://religionclause.blogspot.com/
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