Free Sam Mullet, lawyer for Amish bishop asks judges
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The lawyer for jailed Amish sect bishop Sam Mullet says the Justice Department is trying to portray his client as a "mysterious cult leader with supernatural powers" but can't back up its assertions that he's too menacing to be released from custody.
Ed Bryan, Mr. Mullet's public defender, argued in a filing with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week that the government has not produced any evidence that Mr. Mullet, 66, is a threat to the Amish world.
Mr. Bryan is appealing an order of detention by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland.
The Justice Department and Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said Mr. Mullet was directly responsible for orchestrating five beard-cutting attacks on other Amish last year that roiled the normally peaceful community and made international headlines.
But Mr. Bryan said Sheriff Abdalla and the FBI, who put together the case that led to the indictment of Mr. Mullet and 11 others on hate-crimes charges, have over-reached in trying to convince the court that Mr. Mullet is a violent doomsday cultist.
"[Judge Polster] relied on hysteria, speculation and innuendo to find future risk of attack in the Amish community," he wrote in his appeal.
He said Mr. Mullet, a father of 16 who runs his church in Bergholz, Jefferson County, was not responsible for any of the beard-cuttings. Rather, he said, the attacks were carried out by his children and followers for various personal reasons.
In a Sept. 6 attack, for example, Levi Millar and his siblings assaulted their father in retaliation for prior sexual and physical abuse at his hands, Mr. Bryan said, not because Mr. Mullet ordered them to do it.
First Published February 10, 2012 12:00 am
