Expert testimony or anti-Islam bias? Sex assault case tests legal limit.
NEW YORK — An expert witness was called to the stand at a Brooklyn domestic sexual assault trial to tell the jury about the impact of intimate abuse in the Islamic faith.
The testimony included claims that Muslim men entering arranged marriages seek virgin brides from their native countries so they “will be more submissive,” court records show. The witness, Chitra Raghavan, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, also said that Islamic men “across religion” tend to ignore rules giving women the right to reject a husband’s sexual advances.
Men in arranged South Asian unions “sometimes want, particularly if they know they want to be controlling,” to find a wife in their native countries, Raghavan testified, citing an alleged cultural belief “that if a woman comes from their so-called mother country, she will be easier to control, ultimately, because she will be more submissive.
After hearing that expert testimony, a Brooklyn jury found Meftaah Uddin, 33, a Pakistani American man raised in Brooklyn, guilty of repeated sexual assaults against his wife in his family’s Brooklyn apartment. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in late 2022.
His attorneys say he was denied a fair trial because Raghavan’s “sweeping generalizations about Muslim culture” painted him as abusive by nature and prejudiced the jury. The attorneys, Lauren Di Chiara and Robert Fantone, have appealed to the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.
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Not speaking to the merits of the case, and I certainly do not think marital abuse of this type doesn't happen or should not be prosecuted if proven, let me be clear on that 
But if you turn around and imagine some 'expert' witness saying the similar things about black or LGTBQ people, sweeping generalizations about their 'culture' that's meant to incriminate an individual member in a court of law (like, oh, black people are violent, so this suspect is probably guilty of this violent crime), and I think you'll agree this sort of "testimony" really shouldn't have a place in that venue 
