The Associated Press | Posted: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:00 pm
SAN ANGELO, Texas -- Texas Rangers deliberately misled a judge into authorizing the search of the Yearning For Zion Ranch by leaving out key facts, attorneys for polygamist sect members alleged in court filings this week.
Identical 61-page motions, filed Tuesday and Wednesday on behalf of 10 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, accuse Texas Rangers Lt. Brooks Long of withholding details that would have undermined the credibility of the domestic abuse hotline calls that sparked a raid last April.
As a result of the raid, a dozen FLDS men face charges ranging from sexual assault of a child and bigamy to failure to report child abuse.
"The authorities used a hoax phone call as an excuse for staging a massively intrusive raid upon a disfavored religious group. Under the guise of looking for a man they knew was not there and a child that did not exist, the Texas authorities conducted a general search to see what they could find," the attorneys wrote.
The motion, reported by the San Angelo Standard-Times on its Web site Wednesday, says Long failed to tell Texas District Judge Barbara Walther that the caller, allegedly an abused FLDS girl named Sarah, initially refused to give her last name, phone number or location, and she never volunteered her alleged 50-year-old husband's name. The name was obtained by a domestic abuse hotline worker doing an Internet search on "Barlow," a common name in the sect, and "FLDS," the lawyers say.
They also said law enforcement determined the Schleicher County Medical Center had no record of having treated a "Sarah Barlow," as the caller had claimed.
The raid resulted in thousands of pages of church documents, family photos and disk drives being taken from the ranch -- evidence the attorneys want excluded from the trials. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for next month.
Although authorities have acknowledged the calls were likely a hoax, they have said they entered the ranch believing the calls were legitimate and later found evidence of underage marriages.
Dirk Fillpot, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said the accusations by the FLDS attorneys are "baseless and without merit," and prosecutors will vigorously oppose efforts to have the raid evidence excluded from the criminal trials.
The FLDS, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.