Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 20:43:25 -0500
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Subject: [COSM] Tampa Tribune Dec 8 1999 Prosecutors argue to keep charges X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i
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Prosecutors argue to keep charges against Scientology By DAVID SOMMER
The Tampa Tribune
12/8/99

CLEARWATER - Freedom of religion should not protect the Church of
Scientology Flag Service Organization from facing criminal charges in
the death of a parishioner after 17 days of isolation in the Fort
Harrison Hotel, prosecutors contend.

In a series of responses filed seven months after church lawyers first
asked that charges of abuse of a disabled adult and practicing medicine
without a license be dismissed, State Attorney Bernie McCabe said that
Lisa McPherson was denied proper medical attention out of greed and fear
on the part of church officials.

Church lawyers have asked Pasco-Pinellas Circuit Judge Susan Schaeffer
to dismiss the charges on grounds that the very notion of charging a
church with crimes is unconstitutional and virtually unprecedented in
U.S. history.

But ever since the U.S. Supreme Court banned polygamy in the late 1800s,
the court has "distinguished between the right to hold a religious
belief ... and the right to engage in a religious practice or conduct
that violates the criminal law," prosecutors wrote.

In McPherson's case, the Church of Scientology violated its own rules
against treating mental illness, prosecutors contend. And church
officials had twin fears of losing McPherson's business to conventional
doctors and of garnering bad publicity when church critics learned
McPherson suffered a mental breakdown just months after being declared
"clear," a state in which Scientology deems adherents free of psychic
disorders, the prosecutors wrote.

In the year before her death on Dec. 5, 1995, McPherson paid $58,000 for
"treatment" to become "clear," which church literature defines as an
almost superhuman state, prosecutors said. When McPherson died, her bank
accounts contained about $151, they wrote.

Schaeffer is to decide the constitutionality issue before the scheduled
March 6 trial date. -- This is the cosmedia list for notification of
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