Two former leaders of an isolated polygamous community in
Canada were convicted Monday of practicing polygamy after a decades-long legal
fight, setting up another potential court battle over the constitutionality of
Canada's polygamy laws.
Winston Blackmore, 60, and James Oler, 53, were found guilty
by British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Sheri Ann Donegan, who said the
evidence was clear that Blackmore was married to 25 women at the same time and
that Oler was married to five women in the tiny community of Bountiful.
Blackmore never denied having the wives as part of his
religious beliefs that call for "celestial" marriages. His lawyer
Blair Suffredine has already said Blackmore would challenge the
constitutionality of Canada's polygamy laws if his client was found guilty.
"I'm guilty of living my religion and that's all I'm
saying today because I've never denied that," Blackmore told reporters
after the verdict.
"Twenty-seven years and tens of millions of dollars
later, all we've proved is something we've never denied. I've never denied my
faith. This is what we expected."
Blackmore and Oler were prosecuted as part of an
investigation first launched in the early 1990s by the provincial government.
Under Canadian law, the maximum penalty they will each face
is five year in prison. The two will be sentenced at future hearings.
Blackmore and Oler are members of the Fundamentalist Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect that believes in
plural marriage. The group's main base is in a small community on the
Utah-Arizona border in the United States.
Oler was chosen to lead the Canadian community just north of
the U.S. state of Idaho following Blackmore's excommunication from the sect in
2002 by Warren Jeffs, considered the prophet and leader of the group.
Authorities have said Jeffs still leads the sect from a
Texas prison, where he is serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting
underage girls he considered brides.
The mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy in the
late 19th century and disputes any connection to the fundamentalist
group's form of Mormonism.
At the 12-day trial earlier this year, witnesses included
mainstream Mormon experts, law enforcement officials who worked on the
investigation and Jane Blackmore, a former wife of Winston Blackmore who left
the Canadian community in 2003.
Justice Sheri Ann Donegan praised Jane Blackmore as a highly
credible and reliable witness.
"She was a careful witness," Donegan said.
"There was nothing contrived or rehearsed in her answers. She was
impartial."
Much of the evidence in the trial came from marriage and
personal records seized by law enforcement at a church compound in Texas in
2008. Donegan disagreed with assertions by Blackmore and his lawyer that the
records should be given little or no weight, saying she found them reliable.
Donegan said Winston Blackmore's adherence to the practices
and beliefs of the religious group were never in dispute, nothing that he did
not deny his marriages to police in 2009. Blackmore even made two corrections
to a detailed list of his alleged wives, she said.
"He spoke openly about his practice of polygamy,"
Donegan said.
"Mr. Blackmore confirmed that all of his marriages were
celestial marriages in accordance with FLDS rules and practices."
The investigation and attempted prosecution of Blackmore and
Oler dragged on for years due to uncertainty about Canada's polygamy laws.
After a constitutional reference question was sent to the
British Columbia Supreme Court, the court ruled in 2011 that laws banning
polygamy were valid and did not violate religious freedoms guaranteed in the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
AP
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