Tom Green has been sentenced on bigamy and criminal nonsupport charges, completing the first successful prosecution of a polygamist in Utah in a half-century.
So what happens now?
We already know Green is going to appeal his conviction and five-year prison sentence, butwhat will Utah do about the thousands of other polygamists living in the state?
The answer to that question will speak volumes about Green's case.
Green's trial was the first time the state's common-law marriage and bigamy statutes were both used to prosecute a polygamist.
Juab County Attorney David Leavitt had Green declared to be married to Linda Kunz Green by a common-law marriage, and then successfully argued that Green was a bigamist for claiming four other women as wives.
Leavitt's maneuver gets around the old roadblock of defining cohabitation that plagued previous polygamy prosecutions.
But will we see more polygamists hauled into court now that Leavitt has shown it can be done? Or will Tom Green be the last polygamist to be tried for the next 50 years?
There has been a reluctance to go after polygamists, due to a combination of the cultural memory of "cohab hunts," religious freedom concerns and the cost of supporting large numbers of children left fatherless by such prosecution.
But reports of incest, statutory rape, physical abuse, welfare fraud and forced marriages has turned public sentiment against those who practice polygamy. They no longer see it as "the principle" practiced by Mormon pioneers.
Green and his supporters maintain the reason the state has come down on him is because he is a high-profile polygamist without the means to sustain a protracted legal battle. They also charge that Green's prosecution is a bit of Olympic housekeeping, to show the world that Utah does not tolerate a practice that the Republican Party once considered a relic of barbarism.
It's a charge Leavitt denies, but it's one that will stick if Green is the only polygamist to be prosecuted. It will appear that the Green case was a show trial for the benefit of the world which is now watching Utah carefully.
Green has been a high-profile polygamist, appearing in media around the world, but it's hard to believe that he is the only polygamist who made it on to officialdom's radar. The Allred, Kingston and Harmston groups are just some of the better-known polygamist clans in the state, yet the state has only prosecuted two Kingstons in a case related to polygamy.
If Green's case were an Olympic housecleaning effort, it was an abuse of the legal system and a waste of time, money and investigative resources that could have been used in other cases.
But if this is truly the dawn of a new era in Utah law enforcement, we expect to see the state come down on other polygamists, not showing fear nor favor for any particular group.
It is up to the state's prosecutors, from the Attorney General on down, to determine the verdict history will render on the Green case.