Irving Davis, convicted of raping and killing a 15-year-old El Paso girl, has asked a Texas appeals court to throw out his death sentence, arguing that jurors should not have been told about his new religion Satanism.

The revelation, defense lawyers argue, violated Davis' free exercise of religion and improperly prejudiced jurors against the 27-year-old inmate.

Details.

Following the defense attorney's theory, any gang member could designate his leader as a priest and his gang as a church and thereby protect himself with the First Amendment. I don't think so. Surely there are a few fundamental characteristics of worship, including the notion that the general world view of the religion does not involve embracing evil. Isn't there uniform social agreement that evil is bad?