B.C. man found guilty of polygamy believed he couldn’t be prosecuted: lawyer
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CRANBROOK, B.C. — The lawyer for a British Columbia man found guilty of marrying two dozen women says his client believed he could not be prosecuted for polygamy.
Winston Blackmore’s attorney, Blaire Suffredine, was in B.C. Supreme Court in Cranbrook on Wednesday, arguing that a provincial attorney general in the early 1990s issued a statement that said charging an individual with polygamy would breach their charter rights.
“His statement, that this is the law and this is what we will enforce and this is what we won’t enforce … is a clear statement that everyone in British Columbia, including Mr. Blackmore, can rely on,” Suffredine said.
The statement followed an RCMP investigation in Bountiful, B.C., where the court has heard residents follow the tenants of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a sect that condones plural or “celestial” marriage.
