Does Religious Freedom Protect Torture? SyFy’s new Series “Defiance”

I'm watching Defiance, Episode 2 - a new SyFy channel production about a post-apocalyptic earth city filled with mixed alien races. One of the aliens communities is torturing one of its own for cowardice in battle. The new sheriff, a typical blonde American cowboy, stops the ceremony at gunpoint. The alien in question begs to let them finish his torture, which is necessarily to clean him of sins so that his soul will reach absolution, and ...