BRIGHAM CITY -- The state"s custody fight for the son of John Daniel Kingston returns to the 1st District Courthouse here again next week, hinging in part on how an illegal lifestyle like polygamy influences children.
In September, the 15-year-old fled the polygamous clan even though he told officials he has been designated its future head.
A 19-year-old girl who was with the boy when Box Elder Sheriff"s deputies found him triggered a Utah Attorney General"s Office investigation when she claimed she was forced into an underage marriage with her cousin.
An attorney general spokesman said the investigator in that case, Ron Barton, is not ready to comment. "At this point, he"s still in the midst of things," Paul Murphy said.
The cases are reminiscent of the 1998 prosecutions of John Daniel Kingston and his brother David after his 15-year-old daughter fled the clan in protest of a forced underage marriage to David Kingston. The latter is now in prison for incest.
The latest runaway told officials who placed him in the custody of the state Division of Child and Family Services that he feared the abusive discipline he said he"d witnessed in the Kingston family, even though he was spared it.
In the coming custody trial, state lawyers plan to argue emotional mistreatment amid the secretive polygamous lifestyle as grounds to keep the boy in foster care, featuring psychological testimony of his fears.
But Kingston"s lawyer has maintained the boy was lured away by manipulative friends using the boy"s girlfriend as bait, all to ransom some of the Kingston fortune.
In previous hearings, testimony indicated the same woman who sheltered the boy also provided the penmanship in a letter from the boy claiming he was owed $6,000 by his father for farm work. Kingston took that as a ransom note and initially reported to deputies that his son had been kidnapped.
Monday a pre-trial status conference is set for 10:15 a.m. before 1st District Juvenile Judge Larry Jones. The closed-door conference will either clear up final details before the custody trial -- also closed to the public -- set for all day Nov. 26 before Judge Jones, or cancel the trial if a settlement is announced.
Assistant Attorney General Karl Perry and Dianne Balmain, the juvenile court guardian ad litem assigned the case, also a lawyer, will call witnesses for the state"s case, and said it appears it"s going to trial.
"It"s a good bet," Balmain said.
"At this point, nothing"s been worked out," Perry said. "It"s looking like we"re going to trial."
Justin Bond, John Daniel Kingston"s court-appointed attorney, sounded a little more hopeful of a negotiation short of trial.
"We"re trying to work it out," he said. "We"re negotiating. But we"re still preparing to go to trial."
Kingston"s polygamous lifestyle, illegal under state law, will be an issue in the state"s bid to keep custody of the Kingston runaway.
"There is no case law to guide us on that," Perry said. "But it"s an angle we can look at. It"s just not the easiest thing to convince a judge of, since we"ve turned our heads away from it for so long in this state."
Plus, he said, a defense attorney can argue that if it"s polygamy, then where are the charges?
Then if a prosecution is made for polygamy and children need to be shielded "then we have to go pick up every Kingston child in the state," Perry said. "And we"re not prepared to do that.
"It is allowing children to engage in illegal behavior," said another official involved in the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"It"s similar to parents who let their kids engage in other illegal behavior like drugs. . . . there"s also the secrecy and the lying perpetuated in the lifestyle to keep it hidden that teaches them to be deceitful."
Bond is appointed by Judge Jones as lawyer for Margaret Larsen Owens, of Plymouth, the 15-year-old boy"s mother. Her eligibility for a public defender was not based on Kingston"s sizeable assets as a Salt Lake-area businessman, since they haven"t admitted to being married, officials said.