Seventh Circuit O.K's Hannibal Lecter's Special Diet?

In the case Koger v. Bryan (read it here) the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit approved of a special diet for a prisoner who was a devil worshiper and his own pastor. The case was filed under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The Act guarantees felons serving long prison sentences will get better food and beverages than would be air travelers stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours under a Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down the Passengers' Bill of Rights New York state enacted.

In Decision of the Day there is this description of the prisoner who made this request: "Plaintiff Gregory Koger was a Baptist when he entered Illinois state prison, but he went through several religious transformations while incarcerated, filing numerous requests for a special religious diet along the way. Eventually, Koger settled on Thelema, a religion founded by famed devil worshipper Aleister Crowley, whose golden rule is not “Do Unto Others . . .,” but rather “Do What Thou Wilt.” And Koger decided that for him, “Do What Thou Wilt” meant eating a special vegetarian diet." Now Illinois will have to purchase his special vegetarian diet and pay for the litigation--call it "greens fees."

"Thelema comes from the Book of the Law and drives this essential doctrine home: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will." This is not a license to do what you want, but rather a charge to find your True Will and accomplish it above all else. It is up to each individual person to interpret the Book of the Law for themselves, appealing to the writings of the prophet, but ultimately deciding for themselves as to the meaning of each verse. The only question is whether the person will be king of his own destiny, or the slave to the desires of others." the Thelema website says.

The religion of Wicca was devised by a member of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (place of worship), Gerald Gardner. He adapted the Law of Thelema to his attempt to bring back paganism and it became the Wiccan Crede "An it harm none, do what ye will".

Devil worshipers have to be accommodated in our prison system because--well, because they're not airplane passengers, I guess (see my posts of March 6 and 25th to see what I mean). If Hannibal Lechter has firmly held devil worshiping beliefs one assumes he is entitled to his cannibalistic diet of choice at the expense of Illinois taxpayers, some of who he literally may be consuming.

If he believes it necessary to conduct a black mass and drink the blood of a virgin, perhaps Illinois will have to scout him out a teen full of betacaratene.

If any of the Hollywood stars that have the strange eating habits described here wind up in the hoosegow like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and the ever so incarceratable Amy Winehouse (this weekend's collar-- who was arrested in London on suspicion of being Amy Winehouse) they will be able to purse their strange gustatory habits. While it is often said among criminals "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time" the same may not be said for doing the thyme. As long as you're incarcerated, the Constitution guarantees you the spice of your choice--maybe even Posh Spice.

This may all be good news for Wesley Snipes, who got three years in the Federal poky (Al Capone Tax Evader Suite) for Being Incredibly Gullible and/or Stupid in the Second Degree Where Taxes are Concerned.

One of his advisers, Eddie Kahn, had been indicted for willful failure to file tax returns in 1985, and Eddie's wife, "Kookie" Kahn, was also one of Snipes' tax experts, as well. ("Expert" is a word made up of two parts: "Ex" meaning former, and "spurt" meaning drip under pressure.) If your acting coach is nicknamed "Kookie" no big deal, but when your accountant is hung with that sobriquet and is telling you the IRS has no jurisdiction to collect taxes and you can send them a non-negotiable "bill of exchange" to pay your taxes, perhaps a second opinion is in order. Eddie later fled to Panama, perhaps because he was under the impression it was a tax haven. Maybe he didn't understand the difference between "haven" and "asylum"--although some of his theories suggest that the asylum he should be in may have more to do with his mental state than a foreign state.


Are Snipes' religious beliefs as strange as his tax opinions and theories are? "A spiritual man – he claims to study what he refers to as an “ancient African sciences” – Snipes anchors his sentences with phrases like, “by the grace of the most high,” it says in a profile from 2006 here, ironically captioned "You'll Never Eat in This Town Again." Does he eat exotic ancient African dishes? He need not have concern if his beliefs require unusual sustenance thanks to Koger v. Evans. On the other hand, if he was counting on the Feds having enough purchasing power to bring him takeout from Wolfgang Puck's restaurants, or the W Hotel Underbar (where that interview took place), he may wish he had ponied up some cabbage so the Feds could afford his greens after all.