It was a decision oblivious to religious and cultural differences. Roxbury Municipal Court Judge Kenneth Fiandaca ruled recently that a Muslim woman would have to remove her niqab, a religious head scarf that covered most of her face, when she testified against her ex-boyfriend, who was on trial to face charges of domestic violence.
As Sean Cotter reported in The Boston Globe, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office said the ruling was “tantamount to a dismissal” since the woman had no intention of violating her religious beliefs by complying. And thus we present a New England Muzzle Award to Judge Fiandaca for his insistence on following the letter but ignoring the spirit of the Constitution.
Fiandaca was relying on the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees that a criminal defendant has the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” In nearly all cases, that means a face-to-face encounter. Fiandaca was of the opinion that the accuser’s niqab, which covered all of her face except a slit for her eyes, amounted to a denial of the defendant’s rights.
If Fiandaca’s ruling had stood, the defendant would have immediately walked free without the jury having a chance to hear the woman’s testimony that “he was drunk and invaded her house, grabbed her by the throat, and punched her in the face while her current partner tried to fend him off,” as Cotter reported.
Fortunately a more legally astute mind prevailed. A single justice of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, Serge Georges Jr., ruled against Fiandaca, writing, “The right to confrontation is not absolute,” explaining that other courts have “recognized limited and exceptional circumstances in which a defendant’s rights under the Sixth Amendment … appropriately yield to competing constitutional interests.”
The woman was thus allowed to testify while wearing her niqab, and a jury found the defendant not guilty. But that’s not the point. The point is that her right to practice her Muslim faith should not have prevented her from appearing in court to give her version of what happened. Thanks to Justice Georges, her religious liberties were recognized, and justice was done.