YFZ ranch « CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

March 25, 2009

FLDS REVISITED: ONE YEAR LATER

Filed under: Child Abuse Crimes Lawyer — Tags: child abuse, CPS, FLDS, polygamist, Texas justice, YFZ ranch — johntfloyd @ 11:56 pm

Aftermath of the Texas CPS Raid

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

In the fall of 2003 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (“FLDS”) arrived in Eldorado, Texas. They purchased a 1700-acre ranch four miles outside of town. They called it the “Yearn for Zion Ranch” (“YFZ”). More members arrived. They constructed a mammoth temple and created their own community. They lived in peace.

While rumors circulated about in nearby Eldorado that the FLDS was a “polygamist cult” with older men taking multiple teenage girls as wives, there was no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing at the ranch. That is, until March 29, 2008 when a deranged African-American woman pretended to be a 16-year-old former FLDS resident twice impregnated by an older man and called a local domestic violence hotline saying she had been sexually and physically abused at the YFZ ranch. Women at the crisis center took this egregious false report to law enforcement, including the Texas Rangers, and the fires of one of the largest and most costly religious witch-hunts in Texas history were lit. There was no controlling the massive law enforcement and child protective services stampede that ensued.

Five days after the Rosita Swinton false report to the domestic violence hotline, the Texas Rangers and local law enforcement agencies, supported by Texas Child Protective Services (“CPS”), launched a massive, military-style raid on the YFZ compound. They threatened and generally terrorized the approximately 700 people living at the ranch, including more than 400 children. They conducted searches of all the buildings on the compound, including the temple. They seized documents and arrested people—all without any reasonable probable cause.

But worst of all, CPS seized and removed 439 FLDS children from the lawful custody of their parents. CPS had no legitimate cause, and certainly no legal authority, to sever the cherished child-parent relationship. While a local judge, apparently influenced by local politics and a mindset similar to CPS workers, held that the removal of the children was legal, she was quickly reversed by a state appeals court that pointed out just how flagrantly she had violated Texas family law. (more…)

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June 10, 2008

FLDS: A LOOK AT AN UNNECESSARY TRAGEDY

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: CPS, criminal defense, FLDS, religious freedom, sexual abuse, Texas justice, YFZ ranch — admin @ 12:19 am

Swift Justice? Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd Opines on the FLDS Debacle

This column has examined the FLDS case extensively since the military-style raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas on April 3, 2008. There are two things that stand out about this tragic case: First, the raid was totally unnecessary and most certainly unlawful; and, second, the financial cost to the state of Texas is a staggering $7 million and the emotional cost to the FLDS parents and children is immeasurable.

Texas residents were from the very beginning outraged at the sight of grieving mothers having their children – a total of 468, two-thirds of whom were 5 years of age or younger – snatched from their bosom. Equally outrageous was the fact that the state’s Child Protective Services on April 17 and 18 waltz into a court of law amidst national media attention and presented its “evidence” to justify the decision to remove these children from their parents and place them in foster care. It was a pathetic spectacle. A state district court endorsed the spectacle by approving CPS’s actions.

But on May 22, 2008 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Austin overturned the decision by San Angelo County District Judge Barbara Walters who had ruled that CPS had presented adequate evidence that the FLDS children were in “immediate danger” of physical and sexual abuse at the YFZ ranch which warranted their removal from the custody of their parents and their placement in foster care. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the appeals court decision on May 29, 2008.

And what was this “evidence” of “immediate danger”? Nothing except that CPS believed the children were in such danger of abuse because of a “pervasive belief system” by FLDS church members that girls can, and should, get married at the age of puberty. CPS did not present an iota of evidence that FLDS members at the YFZ ranch practiced this religious tenet. CPS did not present an iota of evidence that any underage child had been forced into “spiritual marriage” as it had indicated through leaks to the media. CPS did offer evidence that five teenage girls had been impregnated – presumably at the YFZ ranch. It was conceded by CPS that these pregnancies had occurred when the girls were 15 or 16 years of age. Until 2005, it was lawful for a teenage girl with parental consent to marry at 14 and the current age for parent consent marriage is 16. The five marriages that produced these pregnancies, therefore, could have been legal under Texas law. CPS did not offer any evidence that the pregnancies occurred as a result of some unlawful “sexual assault” by an older FLDS members, as had been repeatedly suggested through media leaks. (more…)

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