Superstious stupidity is a viable defence in law?

While it's been recently established it's not okay to kill women because you find them annoying, and probably not okay to kill homosexuals because you're a hate filled bigot (1), it seems it is pretty much okay to kill someone if you think they're possessed by the devil (2).

Perhaps Clayton Weatherstone and Ferdinand Ambach should have tried that tactic in court.

"Your honour, I stabbed her repeatedly to let the wickedness out!" or "I beat him to death with a banjo in order to exorcise his perverted demonic homosexuality! I was only trying to help ..."

If that seems wantonly nasty-minded on my part, you haven't absorbed the facts fully. A woman was killed through the inept stupid brutality of a bunch of morons in thrall to some particularly idiotic ideas about evil spirits. A woman died because of unacceptable ignorance and stupidity and superstition. The people who killed her get community service - what community wants imbeciles who think people are possessed by the devil in it? - and she gets to be dead. Forever. That's the truly offensive thing here.

Utterly, utterly disgusting.

1 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2009/07/breaking-news-women-less-deserving-of.html
2 - "Bungled exorcism was a 'crime of love'," unattributed NZPA article. Published in the New Zealand Herald, 14th of August, 2009. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10590822)