Jury finds ex-polygamist leader guilty of bigamy
Updated 11:01 a.m., Wednesday, March 28, 2012
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Jury-finds-ex-polygamist-leader-guilty-of-bigamy-3439231.php
MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — A former lieutenant to polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was convicted Wednesday of illegally taking three wives besides his own, despite his attorney's argument that "celestial marriages" weren't forbidden by state law. A West Texas jury found Wendell Loy Nielsen guilty of three counts of bigamy. He faces up to 10 years in prison.
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I have blogged before on the topic of Wendell Nielsen's prosecution. I cannot pass judgment on the extent to which he was or wasn't involved in the wedding of young teens to Warren Pedo' Jeffs. One thing I do know, however, is that Texas is going out on a tenuous limb. Wendell has (at least) four "bed-partners". He would not use that term. He would quietly refer to them as wives, even though "wives" they are not. Perhaps one of them is legally married to him - the others cannot be - or else he would officially be a bigamist. He has been convicted now of bigamy because he meets the two following standards: 1. He is legally married to one person.
2. He calls several other women he knows, "wives".
His crime, then, is that he has uttered unacceptable, criminal words. Oh yeah - he's also a DREADED MORMON FUNDAMENTALIST. He will do ten years in the clink for saying "wife" (not "girl-friend"). Don't try to tell me that the First Amendment is not dead in Texas.
Is it the term "wife" which has Texas's knickers in such a twist, or is it the fear that he might have had sex with more than one person (unlike law-abiding Texans)? So here is the -
BIG QUESTION
Is there a lawyer out there who will take this absurd conviction and appeal it to a higher court? Does someone other than Jonathan Turley have the urge to get Reynolds overturned? You see, Texas did not have such a silly, overbroad bigamy statute until Mark Shurtleff went on a trip to Texas and shopped Utah's goofy ancient statute to the Texas legislature.
Should Kody Brown move to Texas?
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In other news, law enforcement agencies in British Columbia are now looking seriously at enforcing the recently upheld Canadian anti-polygamy law against the residents of Bountiful, B.C. Let's watch and see if they remember to arrest the poor, guilty women, too. OR - is it just a crusade against a handful of Fundamentalist Mormon husbands? Politics make me sick sometimes.
