Michael Cassidy will avoid jail time and a hate crime charge, but he has to plead guilty

May 26, 2024

Michael Cassidy, the Christian zealot who vandalized The Satanic Temple’s display in the Iowa Capitol last December, will plead guilty to criminal mischief in exchange for the prosecution dropping a (much more serious) felony charge. His decision also means he’ll avoid getting charged with a hate crime and spending any time in jail.

While the consequences won’t be as severe as they could have been, it at least means the faith-based attack won’t go unpunished.

The Satanic display in question featured an altar with a mirror-covered ram’s head representing Baphomet wearing a red cloak and wreath. Towards the bottom, surrounded by candles, there were tiny plaques listing the Seven Fundamental Tenets (e.g. “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason&rdquo.

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Satanists were only there because Iowa has an open-door policy when it comes to holiday displays in the Capitol. As long as the proper paperwork is filled out and all rules are followed, just about any group can make a request. And many groups did! Around the same time, the Rotunda also featured displays from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, and the (conservative Catholic) Thomas More Society.

But days before the Satanic display was scheduled to come down, someone destroyed it by beheading Baphomet.

A right-wing media outlet, The Sentinel, identified the culprit as Michael Cassidy, “a Christian and former military officer.”

“The world may tell Christians to submissively accept the legitimization of Satan, but none of the founders would have considered government sanction of Satanic altars inside Capitol buildings as protected by the First Amendment,” Cassidy told The Sentinel. “Anti-Christian values have steadily been mainstreamed more and more in recent decades, and Christians have largely acted like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water.”

…

“I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” Cassidy continued. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”

…

Cassidy cited 1 John 3:8 as an additional motivation for his destruction of the statue: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” He noted that “Scripture exhorts us to think and act like Jesus Christ.”

To be clear, there was nothing “anti-Christian” about the display unless you believed that label applied to anything that wasn’t explicitly pro-Jesus. It was also irrelevant what Cassidy thought the Founders might have wanted since our legal system has repeatedly said religious freedom applies to everyone. If Iowa lawmakers wanted to create a public forum for displays, they couldn’t discriminate on the basis of religion.

Cassidy soon turned himself in, perhaps because he assumed nothing bad would happen. The fourth-degree criminal mischief charge he faced carried a fine of anywhere from $315 to $1,875… as well as up to a year in jail. But as far as the fine was concerned, it was chump change. A fundraiser in Cassidy’s name, sponsored by the same right-wing media outlet he spoke with, has since raised over $134,000 for his legal defense.

But jail time was still a possibility.

It would have been quite the tumble for a one-time Navy pilot who was previously a candidate for Congress from Mississippi. In 2022, he lost in the GOP primary. In November of 2023, he was the Republican candidate for a seat in the Mississippi State House but lost in the general election to a Democrat.

It didn’t help that his lawyer told The Sentinel that Cassidy was motivated by his Christian faith to “peacefully protest a display that is a direct affront to God”… which was a bizarre way to describe an act of vandalism. A peaceful protest would have been praying near the display, not destroying it. (If an atheist vandalized the Nativity scene nearby, you can bet no one would call it a peaceful protest.)

Nor did it help that conservative Christians celebrated his act of vandalism.

On X/Twitter, The Sentinel described Cassidy’s actions as an “incredible story of Christian conviction and zeal.” Charlie Kirk posted that his organization would “pledge $10,000 to his legal defense fund,” while other right-wing troll accounts expressed similar pleasure. The Young Republicans of Texas called it “BASED,” while Christian evangelist and grifter Joshua Feuerstein vowed to “personally tear… down” a similar hypothetical display in the Texas Capitol.

In short, the same people who always demand a debate were cheering on destruction. The MAGA “freedom” crowd couldn’t handle actual freedom.

But then, in January, there was an interesting update to the case.

The fourth-degree criminal mischief charge had been upgraded by Polk County prosecutors to a (more serious) felony third-degree criminal mischief charge. That charge can be applied when someone vandalizes property worth between $750 to $1,500. (Though the Satanic Temple said their display was worth $3,000.)

Why was it a “felony”? Because Cassidy was also accused of committed a hate crime because he specifically targeted a religious minority.

"Evidence shows the defendant made statements to law enforcement and the public indicating he destroyed the property because of the victim’s religion," triggering the violation of individual rights enhancement, said Lynn Hicks, a spokesman for the Polk County Attorney's Office.

The bottom line? If Cassidy was found guilty of a hate crime under the new charge, he faced up to five years behind bars. The fine would have also increased but it was negligible given the fundraiser on his behalf.

Cassidy tried to have the case dismissed, but that failed. And that’s why he has now, finally, agreed to plead guilty on a slightly lesser charge in order to avoid the more serious ones.

The Des Moines Register summarized the situation:

According to the filing, Cassidy admits to third-degree criminal mischief, but as an aggravated misdemeanor, without the hate crime enhancement.

He admits in writing that he "partially dismantled a display in the Iowa State Capitol Building, without a right/license to do so," and that the damage caused was greater than $750.

The agreement calls for Cassidy to receive a deferred judgment with two years probation, an $855 civil penalty, and to pay restitution in an amount to be determined.

He would also be required to participate in a victim-offender dialogue with representatives of the Satanic Temple if requested. The court is not bound to follow the sentencing recommendation in the plea. 

The money isn’t all that important here. It’s the principle. By punishing Cassidy for what he did, and making it clear that vandalizing a religious display comes with consequences, the prosecutors are hopefully deterring similar crimes in the future. It’s a huge victory for the prosecution and for church/state separation no matter how conservative outlets try to spin it. (The fact that the hate crime charges were dropped is not a victory for Cassidy; it pressured him to plead guilty to lesser charges.)

Given this outcome, where will all the money raised for him go? Outside of paying for his “multiple attorneys” and paying The Satanic Temple for the damage he caused, The Sentinel says “any excess contributions… will be used to defend other Christian veterans facing legal trouble through a nonprofit organization called Stand With Warriors.” That makes it sound like Cassidy is the victim of religious persecution rather than the instigator. But conservatives love pretending they’re martyrs for the cause.

I asked The Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves what he thought about the plea deal. His anger was aimed mostly at Cassidy’s supporters, but he hoped they would learn a lesson from all this:

It is too much to hope that the short-sighted and savage mob of righteously offended theocrats who were demanding not only the full exoneration of this vandal, but also demanding authoritarian government intervention against our freedoms of religious expression and practice will now take a moment's pause to consider that maybe there is something genuinely unethical—and not merely illegal—in destroying the property of a religious identity that they neither approve of nor understand, but hopefully they will at least realize that the law will act neutrally in prosecuting such attacks.  

The only open question now is what Iowa lawmakers plan to do in response.

Will they maintain the open forum in the Capitol? Will they add extra security to prevent something like this from happening again? Will they close the forum to holiday displays entirely?

The one thing they cannot do is allow a Christian display to remain up while shutting out everybody else—which is exactly what the bigots and vandals wanted. They also cannot sit idly by while a religious extremist decides some displays are more worthy than others.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)