Related
Translate
Previous entry: Court could intervene on cult leader’s fast
Next entry: Iran police ‘target mannequins’
Get RNB via RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Get RNB via Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Follow: Twitter
Most Popular
This Week:
- Guyana’s Jonestown suicide site gets plaque
- Gaddafi preaches Islam to Rome beauties
- Scientology practices ‘putting people at risk’
- Recession: Muslim schools in UK under threat of closure
- Evangelist Tony Alamo Sentenced to 175 Years for Taking Girls Across State Lines for Sex
- Muslim terrorist: Psychiatrist’s lap-dancing outings before massacre
- Australian senator tells Parliament of widespread criminal conduct within the Church of Scientology
- Witches — real or not — persecuted and prosecuted
- US Prepares to Seize Mosques, Property of Suspect Muslim Organization
- When a child dies, faith is no defense
Polygamy charges thrown out against B.C. religious leaders
More articles on this topic: Province may consider appeal against the ruling
Criminal polygamy charges against B.C. religious leaders Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler have been thrown out.
B.C. Supreme Court Judge Sunni Stromberg-Stein made the ruling Wednesday in B.C. Supreme Court, said Neil MacKenzie, a Crown spokesman.
[...]Blackmore, 52, and Oler, 44, were charged in January with one count each of practising polygamy, charges that were recommended by special prosecutor Terry Robertson — the third outside counsel hired by the attorney-general’s ministry to review evidence gathered during a two-year RCMP investigation.
The two previous lawyers had recommended that the anti-polygamy section of the Criminal Code be referred to the B.C. Court of Appeal to determine whether it breaches the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.
[...]
Attorney-General Mike de Jong says the province will consider an appeal of a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that threw out the case against two Kootenay community leaders accused of having multiple wives.
Lawyers for Winston Blackmore and James Oler asked the court to throw out a single count of polygamy laid against each of them earlier this year, and on Wednesday a judge agreed. Former attorney-general Wally Oppal did not have authority to appoint a second special prosecutor to the decades-long case after the first one declined to proceed, Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein ruled.
Oppal championed the use of a little-used section of the Criminal Code to prosecute the two men, rival leaders of a breakaway fundamentalist sect of the Mormon church who led a community in Bountiful.
[...]The law has seldom been used, and never since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted.
At issue is whether the polygamy law would withstand a Charter of Rights challenge based on freedom of religion.
[...]
See Also
• Timeline of Canada’s approach to its polygamous communities
• More about the Bountiful, B.C. community, and about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) it is affiliated with.
• Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler
• Read up on polygamy, and on polygamous sects of the Mormon Church
What You Can Do From Here
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
