By Peter Smith
The Louisville Courier-Journal
Gannett News Service
MAYFIELD, Ky. — Nine Amish men were sentenced to up to 10 days in jail Monday for declining to pay fines for refusing to display a bright orange-red safety triangle on the back of their horse-drawn buggies.
Graves District Court Judge Deborah Hawkins Crooks imposed the sentences after the Kentucky Court of Appeals in June denied the defendants’ appeal of their misdemeanor convictions.
The men said that paying the fines would amount to complying with a law they believe violates their religious strictures against wearing bright colors or trusting in manmade symbols for their safety.
“I don’t think it’s right to put somebody in jail for practicing their religious beliefs, but that’s what we’ll do if that’s what it takes to abide by the biblical laws,” one of the men, Levi Zook, said before the hearing, which was held in a courtroom packed with dozens of Amish men, women and children.
The men belong to an especially strict sect known as the Old Order Swartzentruber. Other Amish groups - including another that also lives in this Western Kentucky county - comply with the safety requirement.
The length of their sentences varied depending on the amount of their fines and court costs, which ranged from $148 to more than $600.
As it turned out, a friend of the defendants, John Via of Paducah, paid Zook’s fine so he could care for an ailing son with cerebral palsy, one of his seven children.
“God has laid it on me” to do so, Via said afterward.
But the other eight were to report to the jail Monday night.
Eli Zook, who was sentenced to four days, said he had to arrange everything from care for his family to having someone milk his cow.
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