(Reuters) - Eight members of an Amish sect received reduced prison sentences on Monday, following a federal court ruling in Ohio that they did not commit a hate crime when they cut off the beards and hair of fellow members of their faith.
Sect leader Samuel Mullet, 69, who had received the longest sentence of all 16 people charged in the case, was resentenced on Monday to 10 years and 9 months in prison, down from 15 years. He has already served three years in prison.
At the 2012 trial, prosecutors called Mullet a "cult leader" who orchestrated the hair-cutting attacks as retaliation for personal and spiritual disagreements he had with Amish in other groups.
Sentences also were reduced on Monday for seven other Amish men from Bergholz, a rural community southeast of Cleveland. Four men set to spend seven years in prison had their sentences reduced to five years and three others had their five-year sentences reduced to 43 months.
Eight others convicted in the case, including six women, have already served their sentences.
U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster declined a defense request to make a larger reduction to Mullet's sentence, saying the sect leader had shown a pattern of deception and manipulation over the community during and after the attacks.
"There is no evidence that any one thing has changed," Polster said.
During the trial, which was held in Cleveland, several victims said they were humiliated when the defendants sheared their hair.
Amish women do not cut their hair or wear jewelry. After marriage, Amish men grow beards.
As the Amish bishop of Bergholz, Mullet was considered by prosecutors to be the ringleader even though he was not present at any of the five separate attacks on nine different individuals in 2011.
The victims had religious and personal ties to the Bergholz community.
A jury found in 2012 that four of the five attacks amounted to a hate crime under the Hate Crime Act. But, in August 2014, the 6th Circuit Appellate Court reversed and remanded convictions in the hate crimes. The conspiracy to conceal evidence charges remained.
The government has until March 16 to decide whether to retry the case.
(Editing by Fiona Ortiz, Mary Wisniewski, Bill Trott and Lisa Lambert)
