Salt Lake City, USA - A Utah judge should be ordered to return control of a communal land trust once held by Warren Jeffs' polygamous church because it violates the sect's religious rights, lawyers argued Wednesday before the Utah Supreme Court.
Justices heard arguments in the five-year-old dispute over control of the trust that is valued at more than $110 million and holds most of the property in Hildale, Utah, Colorado City, Ariz., and Bountiful, British Columbia. Those communities are home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The Utah courts took control of the trust in 2005 after state attorneys alleged mismanagement by Jeffs, who left it vulnerable to liquidation by failing to fight a pair of civil lawsuits in 2004.
In his argument Wednesday, FLDS attorney Rodney Parker said 3rd District Court Judge Denise Lindberg's 2006 decision to strip the trust of its original religious purposes went too far when she "reformed" the trust into a secular entity.
"We don't think the court had the power to do it," Parker said.
Those opposing the church — including the Utah and Arizona attorneys general and court-appointed accountant Bruce Wisan, who manages the trust — said it's too late for church members to ask for such reversals. Under the law, the ruling should have been challenged within 30 days, said Arizona Assistant Attorney General Bill Richards.
"The answer lies inside the religious box. ... It was a test of faith," said Parker, trying to explain during oral arguments why the FLDS failed to challenge the changes until 2008.
The law, Richards argued, provides no exceptions "for a rigorous test of faith."
The FLDS considers communal living a religious principle and formed the trust in 1942 so that all who kept church tenets could share in it assets.
But former church members said FLDS leaders employed the trust as a mechanism of control and used its assets either as a punishment or reward for faithfulness. Those who left the faith, voluntarily or through excommunication, were expected to give up any claim to trust assets.
With that in mind, the rewritten or "reformed" trust allows any beneficiary who can prove a legitimate claim to access the communal assets regardless of church membership status. That has opened the door for private landownership and allowed former church members to return to the community.
After the hearing, sect spokesman Willie Jessop said the religious structure of the trust was a framework for FLDS culture, so the changes are viewed as a court-sanctioned attempt to destroy the faith's way of life.
"There's more at stake than housing," Jessop said.
He said the delayed intervention in the case by the FLDS was in part tied to a belief that the court would essentially dissolve the trust and turn the assets over the to church president — a directive spelled out in the legal documents that formed the trust.
Wisan's attorney, Jeff Shields, said that wasn't an option in 2006 because the church was run by Jeffs, who at the time was a fugitive from criminal charges suspected of using trust assets for his own benefit.
Jeffs is no longer the president of the church. He resigned in 2007 after a Utah jury convicted him on felony rape as an accomplice charges stemming from the marriage of an underage follower. He's now in an Arizona jail awaiting trials on similar charges. And Texas authorities have indicted him on charges of sexual assault and bigamy.
In his argument, Parker also asked the court to impose a stay on trust management activities until it reaches a decision in order to prevent the loss of any further assets.
Wisan is poised to sell a parcel of land in northern Arizona in order to satisfy some of the trusts $3 million in debts.
Justices also held a second hearing on trust issues Wednesday. The second case challenged a state judge's decision to bar Parker's law firm, which has represented the FLDS church for 18 years, from working for FLDS members now suing to regain control of the trust from the state.
Justices will rule on both cases in the future.