R.I. Killer Wants OK to Preach in Prison

[The Straight Story]

R.I. Killer Wants OK to Preach in Prison

By ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) -- A warden's decision to ban a convicted killer from preaching to fellow inmates violates the prisoner's right to practice religion, his attorney told a federal appeals court Wednesday.

Wesley Spratt is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Rhode Island for the 1995 murder of a parking lot attendant in Providence. He said he preached in prison for about seven years, under the supervision of a minister, after what he describes as a calling from God.

But when a new warden took over in 2003, he barred Spratt from preaching, saying it was dangerous to give a prisoner such a position of authority.

Spratt's attorney, Lynette Labinger, said her client's Christian preaching was done under supervision and never incited other inmates or posed a security problem.

"He did it weekly, he did it openly, he did it incident-free," Labinger told a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

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