Conference hydra::dejavu

232.0. "from AP" by CSSE32::PHILPOTT (CSSE/Lang. & Tools, ZK02-1/N71) Fri Oct 31 1986 15:29

Associated Press Fri 31-OCT-1986 05:02                      Prison Witchcraft

                  Inmate Gets Permission For Visit By Witch
                              By LAURA WILKINSON
                           Associated Press Writer

    MINNEAPOLIS  (AP)  -  A  prison  inmate  won a fight to have a witch 
    perform a ritual in his cell after corrections officials decided  he 
    has a right to worship as he chooses.
   
    Robert   Edwards,   serving   time  at  the  Minnesota  Correctional 
    Institution in St.  Cloud for a second-degree murder conviction, was 
    granted permission Thursday to have a witch visit him.
   
    "It  seems  to  me appropriate that the prison treat the request for 
    religious services ... the way that it treats requests for religious 
    services  by  inmates  who profess more orthodox religious beliefs," 
    said  Richard  L.   Varco,  counsel  to  the  state   Department  of 
    Corrections.
   
    "The witch seems to perform functions parallel to those performed by 
    priests and ministers," Varco said.
   
    Antiga, a 54-year-old priestess of the Covenant of the  Goddess  who 
    declined  to  reveal  her  full  name, said she didn't know when she 
    would visit Edwards at the prison, but that it  wouldn't  be  today, 
    Halloween.

    She  said  she planned a private ceremony today, by invitation only, 
    "for those in the craft." Edwards said he would celebrate  Halloween 
    "very discreetly."
   
    Edwards,  35,  of  Minneapolis, who was convicted in 1982 of killing 
    his brother-in-law, said in a telephone interview Thursday  that  he 
    had  been  seeking  permission for a couple of months to have Antiga 
    conduct a purification ceremony.
   
    Edwards said there was nothing sinister about the ceremony, which he 
    described  as  a  way to release his "impure thoughts and anxieties, 
    different disrupting emotions."
   
    "All it consists of is lighting a few candles like they  do  in  the 
    Catholic  Church,  burning  incense,  chanting and singing.  Nothing 
    harmful, nothing destructive," he said.
   
    Prison Superintendent William F.  McRae initially  denied permission 
    for  the  visit  and ritual, saying he questioned whether witchcraft 
    was a religion.
   
    "They seem more founded on evil than good.  Therefore,  I  don't see 
    any advantage to inmates or to myself in having them in here," McRae 
    said earlier.
   
    Antiga said she had tried to correct McRae's idea of witchcraft.
   
    "It is not evil.  It is not Satanism.  He can't  quite  seem to hear 
    that," she said.
   
    Varco  said  he  advised  corrections  official  to  allow the visit 
    because he  believed  the  Wiccan  religion  with  which  Antiga  is 
    affiliated  is  a  legitimate  religion  and  refusal  would violate 
    Edwards' constitutional rights to freedom of worship.
   
    Varco said he based his decision in part on a Sept.  4 ruling by the 
    4th  U.S.    Circuit  Court of Appeals affirming a Virginia inmate's 
    right  to  practice  witchcraft.   That  decision,  however,  upheld 
    Powhatan Correctional Center officials' refusal for security reasons 
    to allow prisoner Herbert Dettmer to possess  candles,  incense  and 
    salt for use in certain rituals.
   
    Use  of  those  items  also  is  at  issue in a case pending in U.S. 
    District Court in Columbus, Ohio.
   
    Marian Correctional Institution inmate William Morehouse, who joined 
    the  Temple of Wicca in Findlay, Ohio, several years ago, filed suit 
    in March 1983 after prison officials refused to  allow  him  to  use 
    certain objects when he meditates.
   
    In  Edwards'  case,  prison  authorities also are faced with similar 
    concerns about the proposed use of candles, incense and  ceramic  in 
    the purification ceremony.
   
    "Any  articles  used in the practice of this Wiccan ritual will need 
    to meet the security requirements of  the  institution  before  they 
    will  be  permitted  into  the  facility,"  said  Deputy Corrections 
    Commissioner Howard J. Costello.