A federal appeals panel has restored a Missouri inmate's lawsuit demanding religious use of an American Indian sweat lodge, suggesting that the imprisoned killer perhaps deserved more time to make his case.
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a federal district judge erred in dismissing the lawsuit by Lance Pounders, who is a life sentence for murder at the Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green.
Sweat lodges are used in some American Indian religious ceremonies to purify the spirit. Participants sit within an enclosed structure and pray while water is poured over fire-heated rocks during a ritual that can involve a shovel and garden rake.
While many states already allow sweat-lodge ceremonies behind bars, inmates in states that have barred the practice often have sued, pitting their claims of religious infringement against worries by prison administrators that sweat lodges pose potential security threats.
Missouri for years has offered a sweat lodge exclusively at its maximum-security Potosi Correctional Center, home to the state's death row, Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Tim Kniest said last Saturday.
Kniest said other inmates of American Indian descent have had access at other Missouri prisons to "sacred grounds," including rocks laid out as a ceremonial "prayer wheel" at Northeast Correctional, where Pounders is housed.
Pounders filed suit last year, contending that he adheres to an American Indian "pipe religion" and that preventing him from using a sweat lodge was unconstitutional because it "substantially burdened his religious practice."
In dismissing the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Donald Stohr pointed to a 1996 ruling in which another 8th Circuit panel upheld the state's refusal to let an imprisoned killer use a sweat lodge at the Potosi prison, citing security concerns. 
That decision conflicted with a 1994 finding by U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright.
Wright said prison officials must let Hamilton grow his hair long and build a sweat lodge in keeping with his American Indian religious beliefs.
After Wright's ruling, a sweat lodge was built at Potosi, though the state appealed the matter, leading to the 8th Circuit's 1996 ruling that prison officials must be given "wide latitude within which to make appropriate limitations."
But in its ruling last Friday, the 8th Circuit panel distinguished Pounders' case from Hamilton's situation, which had presented a "fully developed record."