Scott and I have disagreed over whether the initial raid was justified (I believe it's been established beyond doubt in the Jeffs trial that we're dealing with a criminal enterprise here, so law enforcement would have been foolish to ignore a report of abuse) but this ruling seems to be the only way to handle this situation.

The key is this language in the thrid paragraph of the report: "...did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings." Though I think the State can and will demonstrate such at trial (but I'm unsure, and that's why we have trials, eh?), they simply couldn't do it to a reasonable staandard at the original hearing and shouldn't have tried. A better short-term strategy would have been to ensure that none of the community's men had unsupervised access to the girls who were pubescent and older. Based on the Jeffs evidence and the evidence presented within days that most of such girls at the ranch were or had been pregnant, they would have been able to make that stick.

Chris Clukey

Contributing Editor