One of the clipping services to which I subscribe recently highlighted People v. Assad, __ Cal.Rptr.3d __, 2010 WL 4035491 (Cal. Ct. App. 3 Dist. Oct. 15, 2010). The defendant in Assad was a Syrian man. He tied his twelve-year-old son to his bed and beat him repeatedly and severely with a hose and wooden stakes. As a result, he was charged with torture and other crimes. Several witnesses testified that in Syria and in the Muslim religion, it is permissible to “hit” or “beat up” a child in the course of discipline. It appears that the defendant offered this evidence in an attempt to negate the intent element of the crimes with which he was charged. The defendant was convicted and the admissibility of the evidence wasn't at issue on appeal, but the case did get me thinking a little bit about the relevance of cultural differences in criminal cases. How would such evidence be treated in North Carolina? The only North Carolina cases that I could find involving cultural evidence were capital cases in which cultural factors were offered in mitigation. State v. Robinson, 336 N.C. 78 (1994) (noting that a defense witness “testified [in mitigation] that defendant was a member of an inner-city culture where illegal activities are the accepted standard”); State v. Syriani, 333 N.C. 350 (1993) (noting that the jury found as a mitigating circumstance that “the defendant was raised in a different culture”). That strikes me as a pretty different issue than the one raised [...]
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