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| LYLE JEFFS (polygamist) |
 | |
| PARKER DOUGLAS |
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| SEAN REYES (UTAH A.G.) |
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| Rep. MIKE NOEL (Rules Chair) |
Was it all just a big lie?
Lyle
Jeffs, Warren’s brother and stand-in leader of the FLDS, just pleaded guilty to the
crime of Food Stamp (SNAP) fraud, and will serve years of prison time.
Like his brother Warren Jeffs,
Lyle is a notorious polygamist with some 60 children (children who
could not have been born to just one woman). Warren was never charged with polyga-bigamy.
Utah
has a law in place (at least since 1976) making polygamous cohabitation
(bigamy) a third degree felony punishable by up to five years in
prison. Since 1976, two defendants,
Thomas Green and Rodney Holm, have been convicted under the law and
served time. In 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas) the Supreme Court decriminalized all adult consensual (non-commercial) sexual cohabitation and intimacy.
In 2013, Federal District Court Judge Clark Waddoups (in
Brown v. Herbert) affirmed that polygamous cohabitation (in Utah) fell within the ambit of the Lawrence
decision’s protections. Despite the 10th Circuit’s later
overruling of Waddoups in 2016, Utah’s Attorney General, Sean Reyes,
fought to protect the language of the now-reaffirmed bigamy statute by
more tightly defining the elements of the crime
of bigamy (falsely purporting to marry, and cohabitating). He also
convinced the Utah (2017) legislature to add an enhancement (second
degree) to the crime, so that bad polygamous actors who ALSO commit
abuse (upon wives or children) or tax- (or other types
of financial) fraud can face up to 15 years in prison.
When
asked by the Utah House Law Enforcement committee (on February 7, 2017)
if, once the new statutory language were signed into law, the A.G.
would proceed with immediate enforcement,
the A.G.’s chief-of-staff, Parker Douglas, testified, “Yes”. Douglas
has since left his post at the Attorney General's office.
I
have to wonder if during the years-long prosecution of the
very-polygamous Lyle Jeffs, Utah's distinguished law enforcement community
inadvertently
forgot that Lyle practice(s)(d) polygamy (i.e. had/has multiple
pretend wives) throughout the period of time when he appeared before
Judge Ted Stewart and complied with Stewart’s order for him to be a Salt
Lake County resident.
Did
the A.G. overlook Jeffs’s continued bigamy, or did Reyes elect to break
his promise to the Utah legislature because he is afraid of yet another
polygamy law test case (see
Green, Holm, Bronson,and Brown)?
Did
Representative Mike Noel and Parker Douglas argue so passionately for
the preservation of the felony penalties for “good” AND “bad”
polygamists out of a sincere commitment to
begin prosecuting them, OR - was it because representatives of the LDS
Church were breathing hotly down their necks to keep the felony penalty
in place so that the Church can continue its frantic P.R. repudiation of
“criminal” fundamentalist Mormon polygamists?
Hundreds
of sincere plural families and their children held a protest rally in
the rain at the Utah Capitol on February 10, 2017, pleading with their
legislators to see through
the disingenuousness of the Attorney General and his surrogates in the
House. On the last night of the session, A.G. Reyes held an urgent,
dinner-time meeting with the State Senators to urge them to pass Mike
Noel’s bigamy enhancement bill (HB-99). He argued
that he was pursuing a group of polygamous human traffickers, and that
this amendment would give him the tools he needed to prosecute them. At
the midnight hour, the bill passed by one reluctant vote.
Utah
has tens of thousands of polygamists practicing their deeply-held
religious beliefs and lifestyles in the open. One has to wonder if A.G.
Sean Reyes has simply forgotten all
of his pre- and post-election promises to prosecute all (or even ONE) of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewuaMMTMg3Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLx5oE0e7Xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMNNu5ag5gY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesOr5PO2vw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLu-5SLLFSw
