Records tell the whole story, Crown says at polygamy trial
CRANBROOK The trial of two fundamentalist Mormons charged with polygamy concluded Friday with Crown counsel arguing the bulk of various marriage and personal records entered as evidence corroborated each other.
However, the parties will reconvene next week so that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Sheri Donegan can fix a date to deliver her decision. Winston Blackmore, 60, and James Oler, 53, are each charged with one count of polygamy. Blackmore’s indictment lists 24 alleged marriages between 1990 and 2014, while Oler’s indictment names five women as having married him between 1993 and 2009.
Special prosecutor Peter Wilson rebutted the position taken by Blackmore’s lawyer in his closing argument. Blair Suffredine argued that the records were unreliable and that the Crown had failed to prove that Blackmore had maintained the marriages and conjugal relationship with multiple women over two dozen years.
The records, which were seized by law enforcement at a fundamentalist Mormon compound in Texas in 2008, included details about the marriages as well as personal records for individual members living in both Canada and the United States.
Suffredine argued that information contained within the records was inaccurate and that some of the records were incomplete. In his response, Wilson said that the documentary information as a whole contains corroborating evidence that fills in gaps from individual marriage and personal records. Wilson contended the Crown does not have to prove the polygamous marriages were a continuous relationship, as suggested by both Suffredine and Joseph Doyle, the court-appointed amicus. Doyle is there to ensure a fair trial because Oler is self-represented.
Wilson noted that the 2011 decision in the B.C. constitutional reference case defined polygamy as a crime whose harms outweigh the individual rights to freedom of religion.
It also concluded the Crown does not have to prove that the relationships were ongoing or even whether they lasted, only that the marriage or conjugal union had occurred.
To make his point, Wilson referred to case law from perjury charges stemming from both the Air India bombing and the tasering death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver International Airport. In both cases, a single person was charged with one count of perjury, in spite of making multiple incriminating statements. That’s similar, Wilson said, to Blackmore and Oler being charged with only one count of polygamy for having many wives.