Search warrants challenged

A pair of search warrants served on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch should be tossed because they were based on lies to a judge, lawyers for 10 FLDS men facing criminal charges claim.

In a phone book-sized motion to suppress filed in an Eldorado, Texas, court and made public Wednesday, the attorneys launch a full-scale attack on two law enforcement search warrants executed during last year's raid on the Utah-based polygamous sect's sprawling Texas compound.

"In short, it is clear that the authorities used a hoax phone call as an excuse for staging a massively intrusive raid upon a disfavored religious group," wrote Gerald Goldstein, an attorney for YFZ Ranch leader Frederick Merril Jessop. "Under the guise of looking for a man they knew was not there and a child that did not exist, the Texas authorities conducted a general search to see what they could find."

What law enforcement and child welfare workers found on the ranch led to the removal of 439 children over allegations of child sex abuse and criminal indictments against a dozen FLDS men — including sect leader Warren Jeffs — connected to underage marriages.

The case fell apart and the children were ultimately returned, however, when a pair of Texas courts ruled the state acted improperly and the children were not at immediate risk of abuse.

The highly anticipated court filing attacks the warrants on a series of fronts, including misapplications of Texas law and misstatements by law enforcement. The filings accuse Texas Rangers of deceiving Judge Barbara Walther about the origins of the raid when she approved the search warrants.

The raid on the ranch was prompted by a series of phone calls to a San Angelo, Texas, family crisis hotline by someone claiming to be a 16-year-old pregnant girl named "Sarah Barlow" who was being abused by her polygamous husband, whom Goldstein claims "Sarah" never named in any of the calls.

"In actual fact, after the caller refused to give her alleged husband's first name, it was the New Bridge operator, Jessica Carroll, who fed the caller the name 'Dale Barlow,' based upon a newspaper article Ms. Carroll located by Googling the name Barlow and FLDS," he wrote, adding that law enforcement knew the girl had never been treated at a hospital like she claimed, and Dale Evans Barlow, who was on probation for a sex offense, was living in Colorado City, Ariz., at the time they raided the ranch.

The phone call is believed to be a hoax carried out by a Colorado woman named Rozita Swinton, who is facing criminal charges accusing her of similar phony calls to authorities.