Don’t Monkey With The Constitution

What was assumed to have been a garden-variety monkey meat-smuggling operation may evolve into a serious constitutional dispute:

What started as a late-night talk show joke topic — a New York woman originally from Liberia who was indicted for allegedly trying to smuggle steaks of monkey meat into America via John F. Kennedy International Airport — is shaping up into a potentially major religious freedom dispute.

The woman, who says she imported the monkey parts for religious ceremonies, has attracted pro bono legal assistance from a top law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. And a professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School, Jacob Olupona, may testify on her behalf.

At a hearing earlier this month, Chief Judge Raymond Dearie of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ruled that Mamie Manneh, 39, of Staten Island, has legal standing to argue that her religious beliefs should exempt her from criminal prosecution for smuggling the contraband bushmeat.

As depositions and testimony emerge during the run-up to trial, court papers provide a glimpse into a world of religious rites that lawyers in the case are struggling to find ways to explain to those who are unfamiliar with them.

“Frankly, I sort of analogize it more just in my own personal experience with certain foods that you might have at something like a seder . . . you know, bitter herbs and that might have some reference to the Exodus or something along those lines,” Jan Rostal, an attorney for Manneh, told the judge earlier this month, according to a transcript.

. . .

A professor of law at George Washington University who specializes in religious freedom issues, Ira Lupu, said that Manneh’s case is “not total nonsense,” considering the Supreme Court’s decision last year.