Utah Supreme Court to decide status of polygamous judge
 
By Jennifer Dobner
The Associated Press
San Diego Union-Tribune
 
SALT LAKE CITY – For 25 years Walter Steed has served the tiny southern Utah border town of Hildale as a Justice Court judge, handing down rulings on drunken driving and domestic violence charges. Now, after acknowledging that as part of his religion he is living in a plural marriage with three wives, he's facing an order to give up his post.

The Utah Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Wednesday at Brigham Young University in Provo.

Utah's Judicial Conduct Commission issued an order seeking Steed's removal from the bench in February, after a 14-month investigation determined Steed is a polygamist and as such had violated Utah's bigamy law.

Bigamy is a third-degree felony in Utah punishable by up to five years in prison and fines up to $5,000.

The initial complaint against Steed was filed with the commission in November 2003 by Tapestry Against Polygamy, an advocacy group founded by ex-polygamous women who organized to help others leave the handful of secretive religious colonies that practice the principle.

The case is the first of its kind, said Colin Winchester, the commission's executive director.

"If you are taking the constitutional oath office to uphold the law you should not be breaking the law," Winchester said. "So it's 25 years that when knowing he's violating the bigamy law, he's taking the oath of office ... holding himself out as a public authority. You can't have it both ways."

Steed's attorney, Rod Parker, contends Utah's bigamy statute is being unfairly applied and that at stake are constitutional issues of privacy, liberty and freedom of conscience and religion.

"The problem with the statute is that it isn't enforced, except in rare cases," said Parker, noting that when applied to people outside fundamentalist religious groups, there are identifiable victims, people who have been duped into marrying a person who already has a spouse.

That didn't happen in Steed's case, Parker said. Steed legally married his first wife in 1965. The second and third wives were married – or "sealed" as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints refers to it – to him in religious ceremonies in 1975 and 1985. All three women are biological sisters and no one in the family was expecting that the second and third marriages would be civilly recognized.

"I think it's an equal protection problem," Parker said.

Both Utah's attorney general and the Washington County prosecutor have declined to prosecute Steed for bigamy, Parker said. And the state Supreme Court's chief justice, Christine Durham, opted not to place Steed on administrative leave during the investigation.

Parker also questions the motive behind the Tapestry complaint.

"There is no allegation that it's affecting his performance on the bench," Parker said. "It really is truly only about his private conduct."

Winchester agrees there's no question about Steed's performance, but contends the point is moot.

"My view is that judges are held to a higher standard," he said, adding that neither federal nor state courts have yet found that bigamy – even as part of religious practice – is protected by the Constitution.

Still, Winchester acknowledges the dilemma that Steed's community of Hildale presents.

Hildale and its twin, Colorado City, Ariz., are almost exclusively inhabited by members of the FLDS church. Polygamists have lived in the area since about 1935, almost 60 years before the FLDS was formalized under its name. And an estimated 10,000 people are members of the church, which teaches that plural marriage is necessary for salvation.

Plural marriage was an original tenet of the mainline Mormon church, but the faith abandoned the practice as a condition of statehood in 1890. About 30,000 polygamists, who split from the main church into various fundamentalists sects more than 100 years ago, are believed to be living in Utah.

"We specifically addressed that issue," Winchester said. "And the conduct commission determined that they had to look at it from a statewide basis, not city to city."

Justice Court judges are appointed to four-year terms by city councils or county commissions to handle class B and C misdemeanor infractions, charges with penalties that don't exceed up to six months in jail or $1,000 in fines.

Judges are not required to have any legal education or training prior to appointment, Winchester said. A truck driver by trade, Steed was first appointed to the bench in 1980. He is paid a few hundred dollars monthly for serving in the part-time position, Parker said.
 
SignOnSanDiego.com
Originally published November 1, 2005
 
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