Sect men seek ruling on seized documents
 
By MICHELLE ROBERTS
The Associated Press
Houston Chronicle
 
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Attorneys for 10 polygamist sect men facing criminal charges have asked a judge to throw out hundreds of boxes of documents and other evidence seized from the Yearning For Zion Ranch, saying law enforcement misled a judge about the veracity of the calls prompting the raid and the true intent of last year's search.

But the Texas Attorney General's office said Wednesday in a court hearing that the evidence, including documents that list plural and underage marriages and pregnancies among sect girls, should not be suppressed because there are no records the men lived there or had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The ranch in Eldorado is owned by a trust controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which believes in maintaining all property in common, meaning community members share everything.

Defense attorney Gerald Goldstein said it was unfair of the state to treat the ranch as one residence for the purposes of the search.

Any decision to suppress some of the evidence could hurt the state's case because sect women and girls have been reluctant to testify, even in secret grand jury proceedings.

Twelve members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been indicted on charges including sexual assault of a child and bigamy since the April 2008 raid. The suppression motion covers all but jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs, who awaits trial in Arizona on charges of being accomplice to rape, and a sect member who faces only misdemeanor charges.

The raid in Eldorado began after a domestic abuse hot line received numerous calls from someone claiming to be a 16-year-old mother and wife who was being physically abused at the ranch. The first search warrant allowed authorities to look for the caller, a "Sarah Barlow," and named her husband as "Dale Barlow" — a name provided, not by the caller, but by a domestic abuse hot line worker who did an Internet search for "Barlow" and found stories about a previous case involving a sect member in Arizona.

The first warrant led to the issuance of a broader warrant giving officers the authority to search for any evidence of underage marriages and sex.

The Texas Rangers have since named a 34-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., woman with a history of multiple personality disorder and faked reports of abuse to law enforcement as a "person of interest" in the hot line calls and acknowledged there was no "Sarah Barlow" at the ranch.

The Colorado Springs woman, Rozita Swinton, faces a misdemeanor charge of making a false report in a separate incident in Colorado and is scheduled to go on trial on May 19. She has not been charged in Texas, though Texas Rangers began investigating her more than a year ago. No timetable has been set for the conclusion to that investigation, said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, which is handling the YFZ prosecutions.

Goldstein, said Texas Ranger Brooks Long, whose affidavit was used to help obtain the search warrant, failed to take even basic steps to check the credibility of the calls.

"It is clear that the authorities used a hoax phone call as an excuse for staging a massively intrusive raid upon a disfavored religious group," Goldstein said in his written motion.

Goldstein also argues the search amounted to an unconstitutional rummage through an entire village, given the number of structures and people on the 1,700-acre property, and that the seizure of church records violated the sect's religious freedoms.

Prosecutors, however, say law enforcement had the required probable cause to search the ranch, regardless of later evidence about the calls' origins.

Authorities had "substantial basis for concluding that a search would uncover evidence of wrongdoing," said Deputy Attorney General Eric Nichols in his response to Goldstein's motion. He also argues the warrant wasn't overly broad because it restricted the search to a gated ranch.

The criminal cases, though prompted by the initial child abuse investigation, are separate from the child custody cases that swept 439 ranch children into foster care at one time. All but one of the child welfare cases ended with the children being allowed to stay with their parents; an alleged child bride of Jeffs' is staying with a relative.

The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
 
chron.com
Originally published May 13, 2009
 
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