The Horns of a Dilemma

The following is excerpted from an article by Emiley Morgan (of Utah's Deseret News).  Writing about Federal Judge Waddoups' ruling yesterday, she reports:

 ------------

'He [the judge] wrote that [Utah County prosecutor] Buhman conducted interviews with the Deseret News, The Salt Lake Tribune and People magazine where he made it clear that he intended to investigate and prosecute the Browns. "The fact that no charges have, in fact, been filed, does not matter," Waddoups wrote.

"The entirety of actions by the Utah County prosecutors tend to show either an ill-conceived public-relations campaign to showboat their own authority and/or harass the Browns and the polygamist community at large, or to assure the public that they intended to carry out their public obligations and prosecute violations of the law," the judge wrote. "Without any evidence to the contrary, the court assumes that these are consummate professionals making announcements of criminal investigations to apprise the public that they are doing their duty and seeking to enforce the law."'

 -------------

In the case before the Federal District Court, Utah's Attorney General argued that the Brown family could not claim standing (to wit - they have had not been harmed or threatened with harm) sufficient to warrant the case being heard.  Judge Waddoups disagreed.  This is historic, folks.  Now the federal courts MUST consider whether Utah's bigamy statute (and the Reynolds decision on which it relies) should be struck down as being unconstitutional.

Snarklips must be stewing still over the Utah County prosecutor's (Jeff Buhman's) blunder.  I love this!!!  Buhman said he was (and still is) investigating the Browns for felony bigamy.  What is there to investigate?  The law makes anyone with more than one bed-partner a bigamist and a felon.  The Sister Wives show is all the evidence he needs.  But now he finds himself in a pickle.  Here are his options:

1.  Insist that the bigamy investigation is still continuing, thus giving the Browns all the ammunition they need in order to prove that they must continue to fret under the specter of the threat of prosecution and incarceration. . . . . . . . .  OR he can - - -

2.  Announce that the investigation is now concluded because he lacks sufficient evidence to prove that Kody Brown is a polygamist (or announce that Utah County has elected to disregard Utah's felony bigamy statutes and will no longer prosecute even blatantly public polygamists like the Browns).

If Buhman takes option #1, the Browns' claim of harm and standing wherewith to challenge Reynolds is reinforced all the more.  If Buhman takes option #2, he further bolsters the Browns' argument that a law which neither the state nor the counties will ever prosecute must be repealed.

Now that Snarklips and Herbert have been let off the hook, they can point the political finger of blame squarely at Buhman - let him go down in history as the dimwit who got polygamy decriminalized.