Polygamy trial turns into charter battle
The B.C. Supreme Court on Monday heard an application for a charter argument for abuse of process in the trial of two polygamous leaders connected to Bountiful, a small community near Creston.
A lawyer for Winston Blackmore, a former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints leader, is seeking a stay of his polygamy charge.
Blair Suffredine, Blackmore’s lawyer, is arguing that Blackmore’s rights to a fair trial were violated through an abuse of process.
Jim Oler, Blackmore’s co-accused who is self-represented, expressed interest in seeking legal advice to file a similar notice.
Suffredine’s intent to file the notice, which is being presented as a challenge relating to various sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, was filed last Thursday and discussed on Monday.
Suffredine laid out his argument, pointing to conclusions made by Richard Peck, a former special prosecutor who declined to lay polygamy charges in 2007, but asked that a reference case be tried to test the constitutionality of Section 293 that defines polygamy as a criminal act.
That reference case, with a ruling upholding polygamy as a crime, was delivered in 2011.
Suffredine said that evidence collected between the early 1990s when polygamy at Bountiful was first investigated and the 2011 reference case should not be held against Blackmore since it wasn’t legally clear whether Section 293 of the Criminal Code was unconstitutional.
“What I’m arguing is that after someone has ruled that it is constitutional, it’s not fair to go back to somebody who behaved according to what they were told by the Attorney General and now prosecute them for what they did then,” said Suffredine, in an interview outside the courtroom,
Peter Wilson, a special prosecutor appointed to the case in 2012, said the notice of the charter argument should be considered once the trial is finished and a verdict has delivered, since it never came up as an issue beforehand.
“Fundamentally, I don’t understand it,” Wilson said during court proceedings before Justice Sheri Donegan.