So Ken Miller goes to jail for not answering all of the grand jury’s questions.
Judge Sessions is being faithful to his calling in one kingdom.
Kenneth Miller is being faithful to his calling in another kingdom.
May God bless them both.
Now, for some excerpts from the story:
A Virginia pastor convicted of helping a woman and her daughter involved in a custody dispute with the woman’s former lesbian partner was taken into federal custody Thursday after refusing to answer questions about others involved in the flight posed by grand jury investigating the custody case.
Before surrendering his belt and wallet and being handcuffed by court officers, Kenneth Miller, of Stuarts Draft, Va., apologized to U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions for burdening the court, but he said his religious beliefs prevented him from complying with the court’s order that he testify about others involved in the 2009 flight of Lisa Miller and her daughter. The Millers are not related.
“I am willing to submit myself to whatever” the court decides, the 47-year-old Miller said Thursday during a court hearing called after he refused to answer questions from the grand jury sitting at the federal courthouse in Burlington.
Sessions was reluctant to order Miller held, and he gave him several chances to change his mind.
“We can’t function as a criminal justice system without the grand jury,” Sessions said. “I appreciate your faithfulness to your religion and your moral beliefs and perhaps there is an inherent conflict here.”
One of Kenneth Miller’s lawyers said he didn’t believe incarcerating Miller would induce him to agree to testify, but Sessions said there was no way to find out unless Miller spent time in jail. Sessions scheduled another hearing in a week to see if Miller would change his mind.
[..]
Before Sessions ordered that Miller be held, the two engaged in an unusual philosophical debate between the bench and the defense table. Miller said he couldn’t testify because it would implicate others who helped Lisa Miller and her daughter flee who were also motivated by God’s law, which they feel trumps civil law. Sessions countered that his job is to uphold the sanctity of the legal system and it is a citizen’s duty to comply with orders to testify about their knowledge of crimes.
One of Miller’s attorneys, David Bercot, an Anabaptist lawyer from Amberson, Pa., said after the hearing that Miller answered some of the questions from the grand jury, but he wouldn’t talk about others involved in getting Lisa Miller and Isabella out of the country because of their shared beliefs.
Please note that he did answer some of the grand jury’s questions. But apparently Ken refused to implicate others. Good for him.