Polygamist seeks taxpayer $$ for defense

Polygamist leader Winston Blackmore is asking for government funding to pay for his criminal defense.

During a court appearance last week in Canada, Blackmore sought government assistance to pay for lawyers to defend him on polygamy charges. On a blog he maintains, Blackmore said he believes taxpayer dollars should help in his defense because it is a religious freedom issue affecting all Canadians.

"From the hippies with their free love to the polygamist Muslim and Sikh communities, and yes, the Fundamentalist Mormons, we are all proudly Canadians," he wrote.

Blackmore, 52, is charged with having as many as 19 wives, and Fundamentalist LDS Church Bishop Jim Oler, 44, is accused of taking three wives. Both men have yet to enter pleas to the charges and will appear in a court in Cranbrook, British Columbia, later this month.

Oler's attorney told the Vancouver Sun newspaper that he has no plans to seek any government assistance or a court-appointed lawyer. An FLDS spokesman has decried the prosecutions as "vindictive hatred" toward their faith. Blackmore was a bishop in the Utah-based FLDS Church until he was excommunicated in 2002. Fundamentalists in the British Columbian community of Bountiful split with some following Blackmore and others remaining in the FLDS Church.

Mounting legal defenses for cases such as these are not cheap. In Texas, FLDS members at the YFZ Ranch told the Deseret News earlier this year that legal bills stemming from the raid, where 439 children were taken into state custody but ultimately returned, have already surpassed $1 million. A dozen FLDS men face criminal charges in the Lone Star State connected to alleged underage marriages.

Members of the church have also been engaged in settlement talks over the future of the church's communal property arm, the United Effort Plan, which was taken over by the courts in 2005 over allegations that FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and others mismanaged it. Bills for the court-appointed fiduciary and his lawyers alone are already approaching $3 million.

In Canada, a weak economy, land tied up in the UEP Trust and a series of legal setbacks have nearly bankrupted Blackmore, the Vancouver Sun reported. But the polygamist leader wrote on his blog that he intends to push forward with his defense, challenging the prosecution of polygamy as unconstitutional under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"This is not just about our faith," he wrote. "It is about all Canadians and their rights to be who they are and live their religion. This is an attack on the basic freedoms that we should all enjoy and every Canadian should defend it."

E-MAIL: bwinslow@desnews.com