United States v. Ballard

The defendants did not abandon their central position that the indictment improperly put their religious beliefs before the criminal law and should have been dismissed. Their agreement to the trial court's treatment of religious truth as unavailable to the jury did not amount to a concession that the jury could instead decide their good faith.

Their later argument that truth and falsity should have gone to the jury was an alternative response to the trial court's decision to submit sincerity. It did not displace their continuing contention that neither the truth of the beliefs nor their good-faith religious belief should have been tried.

Johnson v. United States, which generally prevents a defendant from obtaining a new trial based on a course to which the defendant consented, did not control. The defendants' objection was not merely to an evidentiary ruling or trial tactic; it was to the constitutional propriety of submitting any part of this religious-belief-based indictment to the jury.

The Government argued that some allegations, such as claims of actual cures or particular experiences described in books, could be treated as factual representations distinct from religious doctrine. On that view, those allegations might sustain a conviction even if religious truth itself was withheld from the jury.

The Court read the instructions differently. The trial judge repeatedly told the jury that the defendants' religious beliefs and doctrines were not at issue and identified good-faith belief in the representations as the cardinal question. The court never differentiated individual representations or asked the jury to decide the falsity of any supposedly separate factual claim.

Thus, the Court agreed with the Ninth Circuit that the sole issue actually submitted was the defendants' belief in their representations and promises. The Government could not preserve the conviction by characterizing certain allegations as independently submitted when the jury instructions did not do so.

The First Amendment protects both freedom to believe and freedom to act. Although religiously motivated conduct may be subject to generally applicable laws protecting society, freedom of religious thought and belief is absolute: the state may not require a person to prove that religious doctrines are true.

A jury trial on the truth of religious claims would place courts in a forbidden domain. Religious experiences may be deeply real to believers yet incomprehensible or implausible to others, and the Constitution does not permit criminal liability to turn on a jury's judgment that a sect's theology, miracles, or claims about the afterlife are false.

This protection does not depend on whether a religious claim seems orthodox, credible, or preposterous. If the government could prosecute the Ballards because a jury found their teachings false, the same approach could be used against any religious sect. The Constitution therefore requires equal protection from heresy trials for all religious beliefs.

The defendants raised additional challenges to their convictions, but the Ninth Circuit had not reached them because it reversed on the ground that the jury should have decided the truth of the religious claims. Those issues had not been fully developed before the Supreme Court.

Rather than decide potentially unnecessary constitutional and trial issues without the benefit of the lower court's analysis, the Court reversed the Ninth Circuit's ruling on religious verity and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. The Court therefore did not reinstate the convictions or finally resolve every challenge to them.