Biography
John Ruggles was prosecuted for blasphemy in New York. On September 2, 1810, John Ruggles, speaking in a loud voice in a crowded tavern in Salem, New York, said “Jesus Christ was a bastard, and his mother must be a whore.” He was arrested, charged with blasphemy and tried in the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Washington County, on June 11, 1811. Ruggles was found guilty and Justice Ambrose Spencer sentenced him to three months in prison and fined him $500.
The Supreme Court of Judicature heard the appeal during the August term of 1811. John L. Wendell, counsel for Ruggles, distinguished between the union of church and state in England, and New York’s constitution provision allowing “free toleration to all religions and all kinds of worship” that prohibited any official relationship between church and state. Prosecuting attorney Gold argued that the common law of England, as it stood in 1776, was adopted by the constitution and made part of the law of the State. He asserted that blasphemy was an ancient common law offense that existed independently of the established church.
