"Witch" Trial
In 1975, she was arrested for reading tarot cards (called "fortune telling") at her candle and book store in Venice, California; she became the last person tried for witchcraft in the United States.
Z Budapest was arrested at her wicca store following a "sting" by an undercover police woman Rosalie Kimberlin, who received a tarot reading from her. Subsequently Budapest was charged with violating a municipal by-law, Code 43.30, which meant fortune telling was unlawful. Budapest and her defense team described the event as "the first witch prosecuted since Salem," and the ensuing trial became a focus for media and pagan protesters. Budapest was found guilty.
Duly, Budapest and her legal counsel set out to establish Wicca, and more specifically Dianic Wicca, as a bona fide religion. The state's Supreme Court repealed the guilty verdict as unconstitutional and in violation of the Freedom of Religion Act.
Following her conviction, she engaged in nine years of appeals on the grounds that reading the Tarot was an example of women spiritually counseling women within the context of their religion. With pro bono legal representation she was acquitted, and the laws against "fortune telling" were struck from California law.
Read more about this topic: Zsuzsanna Budapest
Famous quotes containing the words witch and/or trial:
“I am no more a witch than you are a wizard. If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink.”
—Sarah Good (?–1692)
“A man who has no office to go to—I don’t care who he is—is a trial of which you can have no conception.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)