FLDS lawyers continue argument that judge was deceived
 
By Matt Phinney
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
A hearing today in the Tom Green County courthouse involving a motion to suppress evidence taken from the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado during a state raid in April 2008 recessed for lunch with little new information being presented.

The hearing is in its second day.

Gerald Goldstein, lead attorney on behalf of 10 indicted Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints members, presented 25 points he said were omitted by law enforcement when they sought a search warrant to enter the ranch. The points were taken from two large notebooks Goldstein presented to 51st District Judge Barbara Walther on Wednesday afternoon. Before calling for a recess Wednesday, Walther asked Goldstein to pare the notebooks' content down to the most important information.

Goldstein said this morning that he believes the true agenda for law enforcement was to "bring people off the ranch" and not just look for one girl.

He said that if allowed he would call Rev. Andy Anderson from the First Baptist Church of Eldorado to testify that Anderson was asked for use of the church's buses before law enforcement entered the ranch. Girls eventually were taken off the ranch in those buses.

"They were looking for an excuse to go to the ranch," Goldstein said.

Other defense attorneys were about to speak before Walther called a recess for lunch.

Attorneys for the defendants filed motions to suppress evidence involving 19 charges related to underage marriage and child abuse. The motions allege that Texas Rangers misled Walther into issuing a pair of search warrants that authorized last year's raid on the polygamous sect's Schleicher County compound, which resulted in the removal of more than 400 children, the largest such action in U.S. history.

In identical motions to suppress, the attorneys accuse Texas Ranger Lt. Brooks Long of failing to provide Walther key details that would have undermined the credibility of the initial phone calls that led to the raid.

The caller claimed to be Sarah Jessop Barlow, the 16-year-old mother of an 8-month-old child and pregnant with a second child, and the caller alleged she was being sexually and physically abused by her 50-year-old husband, whom she identified as Dale Barlow.

The calls are now believed to be a hoax, likely perpetrated by a 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman arrested on charges of making similar but unrelated calls in Colorado.
 
gosanangelo.com
Originally published May 14, 2009
 
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