So apparently in East Texas a judge has ordered that a man marries his girlfriend because he assaulted her ex-boyfriend.
The conditions for probation were:
This got me wondering: is something that's happened (and reported on by either media or court reporters) before? If it's happened before in Texas, I don't think I'd be overly surprised, but has it happened elsewhere?
This happened despite the fact that the marriage and Bible verses requirement were almost surely illegal and similar things have happened on and off, mostly in rural courts with non-attorney judges, for pretty much as long as the U.S. has been a country (and earlier).
The trick is that the orders take effect unless someone appeals them, and since deals like this are usually a result of a plea bargain which waives rights to an appeal, and even if the result is simply imposed by the judge, one has to consider if taking the case up on appeal, having the sentence reversed, and then having it remanded to the same judge for resentencing would be worse from the perspective of the defendant, given the broad authority of a sentencing judge in a minor case like this one, than simply accepting the illegal sentence.
Also, cases that aren't appealed never create precedents and aren't generally available among resources used by legal researchers, so they systemically evade documentation in easily available sources.
This has taken place over the past century, mainly in the southern states of the United States.
These were the ones that popularized the term "shotgun" wedding. A man would be forced to marry his pregnant girlfriend, or face the business end of a shotgun. There would be a "mob" of people involved, so if a shotgun went off "accidentally" (on purpose), no one person could be blamed.
Because such maneuvers were part of the "popular" justice system, they carried over into formal justice system as well (with popular approval). The other parts, about writing Bible verses and getting counseling, would also be typical of the so-called "Bible belt".
