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Federal court upholds convictions of rabbis in torture-for-divorce case

By Maryann Spoto
NJ.com
July 07, 2017

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2017/07/federal_court_upholds_convictions_of_rabbis_in_tor.html




The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Friday upheld the criminal convictions of three Orthodox Jewish rabbis who planned the kidnapping of a man to force him to grant his wife a religious divorce.

In upholding the convictions of Mendel Epstein, Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler, the three-judge panel rejected claims of invasion of privacy and religious freedom among the other six points the three men made in their appeal.

Convicted in 2015 of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, Epstein, Goldstein and Stimler argued that their Fourth Amendment right to privacy was violated when FBI agents gathered information from their cell phone providers indicating their general locations during the investigations. During the trial, prosecutors used the information to show that they were in the vicinity of locations where beatings of husbands who refused to give their wives religious divorces occurred.

Defense attorneys argued the government should have sought a warrant for that information rather than obtain a court order, which requires less of a standard than a warrant to be issued.

They argued that collection of so-called cell site location information (CSLI) over 57 days was the equivalent of placing on their clients' vehicles a GPS tracking device, which courts have already considered an invasion of privacy.

But the panel - minus the consent of one judge - said the collection of CSLI is less intrusive than GPS tracking and noted its shortcomings, such as the signal not always being transmitted from the cell tower closest to the phone and a signal changing from one tower to another while the phone is not moving.

"While the rapidly evolving nature of CSLI may one day give us a reason to reconsider the distinction between GPS and CSLI, we decline to do so today," the court wrote.

But Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo disagreed. In an 11-page dissenting opinion on that point, he said the collection of information about a person's movements over 57 days with a court order rather than a warrant in this case "was a warrantless search that violates the Fourth Amendment."

Epstein, a prominent rabbi with homes in Lakewood and Brooklyn, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors charged Epstein, who is an expert in Orthodox Jewish divorce proceedings, was the mastermind behind the beatings.

Goldstein was sentenced to eight years in prison and Stimler was handed a sentence of slightly more than three years behind bars.

In their appeal, the three men also argued the government violated their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because the prosecution put a "substantial burden" on exercising their religion. They argued that in prosecuting them, the government did not use the least restrictive means, as required by law, to enforce federal kidnapping laws.

But the three-judge panel agreed with District Judge Freda Wolfson, the trial judge, when she ruled in 2015 that there was no "substantial" burden on the exercise of their religion and that the government's interest in preventing serious crimes is compelling enough to warrant prosecution.

The court said that there were other ways to obtain the divorce agreements without resorting to kidnapping, although it noted it was unclear whether the rabbis had exhausted all non-violent methods before turning to violence.

The three rabbis also argued Wolfson should have allowed jurors to hear evidence about Jewish marital law that would have negated a motive for kidnapping.

They contended that jurors should have been permitted to hear that by signing religious marriage agreements, husbands agree to any use of force by a religious tribunal obtaining a divorce on behalf of wives.

But the Circuit Court decision said that with their signatures on marriage contracts, husbands don't agree to "their particular kidnapping."

The panel, which also included judges Michael Chagares and Jane Roth, noted the government can prove kidnapping without offering a motive for the crime.

The 38-page decision also rejected three arguments having to do with Wolfson's charging of jurors before deliberations. One of them said jurors should have been told the kidnapping victims had to have been held for an "appreciable period."

The court, however, said it has upheld convictions for kidnappings that lasted minutes.

"No reasonable juror would have failed to find that the seizure, blindfolding and coercion by the defendants did not involve holding for 'an appreciable period,'" the court wrote.

Contact: mspoto@njadvancemedia.com




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