Judge says convicted killer entitled to vegan diet

June 19, 2008

June 18, 2008 07:41 PM

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe StaffFourteen years ago, Henry K. Boateng was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a Worcester jury convicted him of beating his 5-week-old son to death and viciously attacking the baby's mother.

Now, Boateng -- who changed his name to Daniel Yeboah-Sefah and identifies himself as a Buddhist -- has won a significant legal victory: A federal judge found that the state prison system violated his civil rights by denying him a vegan diet.

US Chief District Judge Mark L. Wolf, in a judgment entered Tuesday, concluded that the system violated a 2000 federal statute that protects religious freedom inside prisons. He ordered the head of the system to provide the inmate at Old Colony Correctional Center at Bridgewater with a vegan diet that hews to his religious beliefs beginning Friday.

Although the prison system had offered Yeboah-Sefah a standard vegetarian diet, he has spent nearly a decade unsuccessfully seeking a vegan diet that excludes all animal products, including eggs and milk products.

Yeboah-Sefah's lawyer, Beverly B. Chorbajian, said her client was pleased by the decision, which Wolf reached following a non-jury trial.

"The statute is designed to protect these people who are stuck in institutionalized settings," said Chorbajian, a Worcester lawyer. "We're all free to change our behavior or do things to accommodate our own religious practices. They are not."

Because Yeboah-Sefah could not be sure that standard vegetarian meals in the prison did not contain trace animal products, he had relied heavily on beans and rice that he bought at the prison canteen, his lawyer said.

Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, said the prison system will not appeal the ruling, although lawyers for the state yesterday asked Wolf to postpone the starting date until Aug. 1."We thought we had met his dietary needs," Wiffin said. "The chief judge disagreed. We will comply."

Chorbajian said the prison plans to serve her client prepackaged vegan meals, including soy milk, supplied by a vendor. Jewish inmates with kosher diets receive similar prepackaged meals, she said.

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