Killer cleared after confession at AA meeting is ruled religious

The law of the land should not be allowed to interfere with a killer's battle against the bottle because Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion, a judge has ruled.

This being the case, discussions between AA members should be treated as confiden tial and protected in the manner of a confession to a priest, said Judge Charles Brieant, of the US district court in White Plains, New York.

"Clearly, it is possible as a matter of constitutional law to have and to practise a religion without having a clergyman as such, or where all members ex ercise the office of clergyman to the extent of receiving confessions," said his judgment.

He overturned the man-slaughter conviction of Paul Cox, 33, who has served seven years for killing Laksman Rao Chervu and his wife Shanta in 1988. Cox was arrested five years after the two doctors had their throats slit, when an AA member told police Cox had talked at meetings about dreams and fragmented memories of killing the couple.

The judge agreed with Cox's lawyer, who said his client should not have been arrested on the basis of statements made in a religious context with the understanding they would remain confidential.

Seven members said at Cox's trial that he had told them about the killings. He told the court he had stabbed the couple during an alcoholic blackout. Cox said he had crashed his mother's car on the way home, gone to the Chervus' house - bought from his family some years previously - and killed the couple, mistaking them for the parents who had criticised him all his life for failing at school.

The jury found him guilty of manslaughter and he was sentenced to between 16 and 50 years.

Judge Brieant said he was relying on previous rulings that a defendant could not be obliged to attend AA meetings because part of its 12 steps self-help programme was religious in nature - members had to acknowledge wrongdoings if these had hurt people.

A federal appeals court found two years ago that "AA is a religion" and a state court of appeal ruled: "Adherence to the AA fellowship entails engagement in religious activity and religious proselytisation."

Mr Cox must stay in jail until after an appeal by the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine Pirro.

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