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| Killer will get kosher meals |
| By Miami Herald |
| Published: 11/03/2003 |
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Convicted killer and Orthodox Jew Allen J. Cotton has won his crusade: he'll get specially prepared meals blessed by a rabbi. The Florida Department of Corrections has long served meals to fulfill the dietary requests of its Muslim prisoners. Ditto its vegetarian, vegan and diabetic inmates. But officials at Everglades Correctional Institute balked at Cotton's repeated requests for a kosher diet. Kosher laws require that meals be prepared in separate kitchens, with separate utensils, inspected and blessed by rabbis, making them logistically and financially difficult, said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Department of Corrections. That argument didn't sit well with Cotton's attorneys at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. Federal prisons as well as county jails in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties have provided kosher meals for years, they said. ''After this settlement, the Florida Department of Corrections has no justification for denying kosher food to any inmate similarly situated,'' said Derek Gaubatz, an attorney with the Becket Fund. ``FDOC would be well advised to change its rules now to reflect this fact, and to avoid future litigation.'' Cotton, who was born into the Jewish faith but didn't start practicing as an Orthodox until the 1990s -- after he was sentenced to life without parole -- filed a formal grievance with prison officials in October 2000. Last year he filed suit in federal court accusing the state of violating his constitutional right to the free expression of religion. |
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