Walther starts to give in, Malonis & Dusek out. If the "Environment" wasn't abusive for Teresa Jeffs, it wasn't for ANYONE.

The Judge starts caving to reality. Malonis gone.

The San Angelo Standard-Times - "51st District Judge Barbara Walther dismissed all petitions and attorneys involved with the case of the now-17-year-old girl alleged to have been married to a 34-year-old man just after her 15th birthday - closing for good one of the highest profile and most contentious aspects of the long-running litigation surrounding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."

This is key.

"Malonis had argued that a series of prospective witness statements from CPS in December stating that the girl had been in a 'harmful, abusive environment' should be considered before Walther dismissed the case."

This is the STATE's case, not Natalie Malonis' case. If they say that Teresa Jeffs was not in a 'harmful abusive environment' and that she should be released from any suit or case, then who ever was? When will they release Merrianne?

" 'The court can take notice of many things,' Walther replied, 'but the court must follow the law. The court cannot make the law. ... This is an unusual case, but I don't see any authority for you to continue.'

With that, Walther dismissed a raft of motions filed in the moments leading up to the hearing - including a motion filed by the Standard-Times to quash a subpoena filed against one of its reporters, as well as an ongoing fight over whether to seal the deposition transcript from YFZ Ranch leader Merril Jessop.

'I was prepared to continue doing what I thought I needed to do,' Malonis said, 'but I'm relieved to have relief.'

Walther also accepted the withdrawal of Carmen Symes Dusek as the attorney for a 14-year-old girl alleged to have been married to Warren Jeffs, the sect's leader, and signed an agreed order to seal a guardian's report filed in the case."

Walther now positioning herself as a Judge that doesn't make law? This is full scale headlong armor shedding weapon dropping retreat. If Walther doesn't see any authority for Natalie to continue, how did she ever see any authority at all?

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Jessop's War. "I WANT MY MOTHER!" "GIVE ME MY DAUGHTER BACK!"

Barbara Jessop and her daughter, appear to playing hard ball, I can't say that I blame them. Strategy after all, says hit 'em while they're in disarray.

"A 14-year-old girl alleged to be a bride of Warren Jeffs received text messages while in state custody telling her to "please stay angry" and to "keep crying, pout, sleep in," according to a report filed by court-appointed guardians and obtained by the Standard-Times.

The report, filed by the girl's guardian ad litem, describes a series of text messages sent to the girl between Jan. 15 and Jan. 21 from a phone number labeled in the phone as 'POP.' It recommends that 51st District Judge Barbara Walther halt visitation between the girl and her mother, Barbara Jessop, and no longer allow any phone communication between the two."

Frankly, I'd tell her to stay angry and conduct a strike as well. It's the All American thing to do. Protest. Slow things down. Be difficult. After all, THEY KIDNAPPED YOU. THEY KIDNAPPED YOUR DAUGHTER.

Again, I could be wildly wrong and have a lot of crow to eat but I'm going with this not being a positive for Texas. Carmen Dusek doesn't quit in the middle of this if she sees Barbara and Merriane Jessop as wrong, she fights Barbara as an unfit influence.

But she didn't.

SHE QUIT.

Furthermore, someone leaked to Paul Anthony.

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I smell blood.

Personally, I think it's over. It may take a while for it to wind down, because we don't know what's going on behind the scenes with all those depositions and whatnot.

The outward signs though, is that it's every person for themselves. The FLDS are going to win this thing. Maybe it's just the supercold wonderful beer I just had, but this is headlong retreat on the part of Texas. It feels like the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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Where do you get jurors from?

That would be "registered voters" for $1000.00 Alec. UPDATED: It occurs to me I ought to mention that it's altogether possible, that 16% of the available Jury Pool in Schleicher County is FLDS. MORE UPDATES: It appears that one needs only to have a drivers license to be summoned to a jury in Texas.

The Deseret News - "The attorney general's office, which is handling the prosecution for the county, hasn't requested a venue change, and spokesman Jerry Strickland declined comment on whether it would.

But FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said sect members would willingly face their neighbors in court.

'We're in that county to stay. We're not going anywhere,' he said. 'We're not going to run. I think everyone has gotten that message loud and clear.' "

Oh, what's this?

The San Angelo Standard-Times - "(A)s many as 120 ranch residents have registered to vote in the county.......Jessop said he would get 500 voter registration cards and take a stance in local politics."

Yup, registered voters. Bwahahahahahaha.....

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Mark Shurtleff's office to hold meetings with the FLDS

My advice to Willie Jessop if he's listening, don't go.

The Deseret News - "No dates have been scheduled, and Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is not expected to immediately participate in the next round of meetings."

If he doesn't go, send someone else. Don't go. You want a face to face meeting with the Utah Attorney General. You want a joint press conference. Any meetings with the Utah Attorney General's office should end with a joint press conference or release. Otherwise, DO NOT GO. More →

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"Getting" Warren Jeffs

At this point I'm starting to wonder if everything I've heard about Al Capone was true. No one was able to "get" Big Al until income tax came along, then they got him on tax evasion. The Salt Lake Tribune.

"As Texas officials sort evidence that could lead to new criminal charges against polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, charges against him in another state are shrinking.

Just two of five cases originally brought against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader in Arizona are still in play, and a significant portion of those two cases have been dismissed.

Now, a judge has set a July 11 hearing on whether the remaining charges, based on Jeffs' alleged role conducting marriages for underage girls, came out of a tainted grand jury proceeding."

Warren was "gotten" on a rather creative "aiding and abetting rape" charge and now he is handed around like a gang rape victim himself, being passed from one abusive state to another with the apparent object of never letting him go.

I get the impression this is a commentary not only on the strength of the charges that each state brings up against Warren but also a commentary on the strength of the charges of which he has been convicted. I have believed for some time that the whole purpose of this pass around Warren tactic is both not accidental and in not being accidental, has a purpose, namely, to keep Warren in jail. It also seems to have served the purpose of attacking the flock while the shepherd was otherwise occupied.

This would seem to suggest that the Attorney's General Four have been discussing "getting" Warren for a while as well and that the purpose of all these meetings is to plan the next "gotcha" strategy.
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FLDS "Renounces" underage marriage.

The FLDS says it will no longer perform or engage in or recommend underage marriages;

The San Angelo Standard-Times - "Willie Jessop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said today the sect will not sanction marriages of underage girls and will counsel members against such unions.

He insists marriages within the sect have always been consensual."

Frankly, up to the his point the lack of discovery of such a union suggests they had been doing so all along.

"Meanwhile, the company responsible for testing the DNA of hundreds of parents and children living on the YFZ Ranch began returning the results to state district court today, the state Attorney General's Office said."

Which coincides with the appointment of the Grand Jury. We see their plan. Service plan hearings end, kids were going to be in custody still and then the "parent trap" begins.

"Additional reports likely will be delivered throughout the week - each report detailing the mother and father of each of the roughly 450 children involved in the massive child-custody case, said attorney general spokeswoman Janece Rolfe.

'Reports have been delivered to the court,' Rolfe said. 'Each child has a report. That report will state who the mother is,' and an additional report will detail the child's paternity."

Connecting the dots will start, and the grand jury will be informed. If there is an underage mother with an "overage" father, they'll know and an indictment will follow, provided of course there is a mom that got pregnant at YFZ or in Texas and after September of 2005. I doubt there will be many such situations. They're already down to single digit numbers of "were pregnant" girls. Remember what the math has to be. The child must be younger than two years of age now and the child's mother must be about 19 years and 7 months old and younger. Then she must testify that the sexual relationship occurred in Texas. A two year and one month old child makes mom pregnant before the law changed. A father that is less than three years older than his partner/wife does not constituted a violation of law. I don't think the grand jury is going to have much to do.

By the way, whatever happened to the special persecutor? Did they ever name one or is it just the Texas State Attorney General's office?

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Today is the day

If I were Texas, determined to make the charges stick, I'd be putting my best foot forward today. It would figure that of the first several cases they try to hear, those cases have the largest likelihood of being connected to some future prosecution.

Frankly, I not that impressed with Texas. I think they've been very good at the logistics of taking and keeping the children, but I don't see great legal minds at work. I've got a job interview today so it might be some time before I catch up on the proceedings.

Previously I had thought this would be rather dull stuff but the FLDS appear to have the facts on their side, it could get exciting. More →

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What Did You See When You Were At The YFZ Ranch Big Brother?

Well, I guess I'm no longer the voice in the wilderness. Vox linked to this blog, and so did CNN. Thanks Vox.

"Modern Pharisee points out that the age issue also reveals the CPS to have lied about what they observed during the kidnappings. He also notes that it has now cost Texas $10 million to fund the CPS crimes... no doubt that will increase significantly once the FLDS start suing the smack out of the state and its agents. Remember, there's no protection against liability when an agent of the state can be shown to have committed a crime."

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Texas inflated numbers of underage FLDS teen girls. It will be proven.

UPDATE: CNN has picked up the story. So has Fox News, maybe the MSM ice is breaking.

So far, Texas is batting 0.000 on finding pregnant underage girls. I still say it's HUGELY important (a battle cry no one is picking up on) that it is now shown to have been IMPOSSIBLE that CPS or Sheriffs Department personnel even SAW a "pregnant underage girl" when they entered the ranch. They were down to three, I've mentioned this before. One was clearly not showing enough to be "evidence, " so much so that her pregnancy is disputed and cannot be documented until she takes a pregnancy test, which she has refused. The other two which have to have been the "obviously pregnant" ones, have been shown to be of age.

Thus Texas LIED to us when they say they saw "pregnant underage teens" and that fact in and of itself would not be enough, as discussed by pointing out that a pregnant teen can be pregnant, in Texas, having never LEFT Texas without violating any law.

So now we're trying to find out who the candidates for an abused girl are. Keep in mind also that you can't LOOK at a girl and say "she's underage AND she's BEEN pregnant" and the same caveat that applies to the supposedly "Pregnant Underage Teen" also applies to her, even if she HAS been pregnant and you can tell somehow. She could have been pregnant in a way totally compliant with the law and in fact most pregnant underage teens have probably not been involved in any illegal act, victim or otherwise. Now, on with the article;

The Houston Chronicle - SAN ANTONIO "Texas child welfare authorities released statistics showing nearly 60 percent of the teen girls taken from a polygamist sect's ranch were pregnant or had children, they seemed to prove what was alleged all along: The sect commonly pushed girls into marriage and sex."

A Lie.

"But in the past week, the state has twice been forced to admit 'girls' who gave birth while in state custody are actually adults. One was 22 and claims she showed state officials a Utah birth certificate shortly after she and more than 400 minors were seized from the west Texas ranch in an April raid.

The state has in custody two dozen other young mothers and others whose ages are in dispute. If most of them also turn out to be adults, it would be a severe blow to the state's claim of widespread sexual abuse."

So why are they not giving up? It is in the hope and faith that they will find a crime of abuse as defined by the law. This also I have mentioned before. Texas was cavalier about going in with a bad warrant and staying on the basis of a phony premise because the FLDS reputation has been effectively destroyed. They can skirt and ignore the law, and in the end, they "know" that they WILL find a case of abuse. Or so they thought.

What is happening instead is that they are not finding anything. In the end, they may have a few teens that became pregnant during the period of time after Harvey Hilderbran's "Get the FLDS vote pandering law," and the great hope of the CPS is that they will tie those pregnancies through DNA to a man too old to have legally had sex with her.

This week the basis for CPS even BEING at YFZ evaporated. CPS is still hoping to find something it can portray as pedophilia prior to the truth becoming well known. That truth being they had no "probable cause" and in reality, they knew it and didn't care. As long as the MSM remains silent, the chance that this is the ultimate outcome increases. The FLDS in the end may prove to be more righteous than we are in their behavior, but they are not perfect.

That is why this must stop. All will ultimately be persecuted for the possible sin of one or two men, a rate in all probability much lower than such occurrences outside YFZ. But that will not matter if there is one Achan among them. A feat by the way, I don't think YOUR Church could duplicate, the presence of only one or two "Achans."

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TEXAS, SETTLE NOW, GIVE UP.

It's going to get oh so much worse for Texas. In one of those revelations that speaks for itself;

The Houston Chronicle - "Attorneys for 'disputed' minor girls taken from a West Texas ranch owned by fundamentalist Mormons say their clients have been taken from state foster homes to undergo videotaped law enforcement interviews without legal counsel.

'It's going on all over the state,' said Laura Shockley, who represents three young women whose ages are in dispute."

You never know when the dam is going to break, but I wouldn't be on the side of Texas in what's coming. More;

''My client told the CPS worker that she did not want to talk to her without an attorney,'' Shockley said. ''She was told that she wasn't entitled to an attorney because it was a civil matter.''

And;

"A CPS official could not immediately be reached."

Of course not. More →

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CPS Realizes it has an "Image Problem?" Relents?

This story I think is significant because one, even though the state had a technical victory, they gave up. Namely, the court in which they were arguing did not have jurisdiction. So I think they're going for image here. Conceding anyway.

Of course there is the small matter that now they have admitted that not one, (the April 29th baby) but TWO of the "Pregnant Underage Girls" that gave birth are, um, uh, "of age." Frankly, I do not know now of any "Obviously Pregnant Underage Girls" that Texas saw when they entered the compound. I continue to ask WHO it was that they saw as this was the supposed basis for continuing the search and later the justification for the seizure.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram - AUSTIN - "Lawyers for the state conceded in court today that the woman from the polygamist sect who gave birth this week while in the state's custody is not a minor and said she is free to return to her home in West Texas or remain with her three children -- including the newborn -- under protective care.

The acknowledgment came during a hearing in a Travis County courtroom, where the woman's husband was seeking to have his family reunited with him at the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch near San Angelo, where last month Child Protective Services officials took more than 400 children into custody on grounds that they were in imminent danger of abuse."

What kind of protective care?
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Texas Acting in "Blunderbuss" fashion, Three FLDS fathers go to court.

More of the turning tide.

The Salt Lake Tribune - "Three FLDS fathers have asked a judge in San Antonio to return their children, saying Texas authorities acted in a 'blunderbuss' fashion to remove them from a polygamous sect's ranch.

The fathers - James Dockstader, Rulon Keate and LeLand Keate - say they all have monogamous marriages to women who were of legal age when they married. Each family lived in separate residences at the ranch and there is no evidence their children were physically or sexually abused, they say."

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Tuesday Was a Newsday. More FLDS News.

The FLDS Attorneys are feeling their oats;

"Legal motions are being filed in several Texas courts challenging the decisions to put 465 people from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch in state protective custody."

"A spokesman for the FLDS Church accused Texas authorities of disregarding legal documentation to keep the babies in custody."

"The state wanted to make sure that they got possession of those babies," said Rod Parker. "If they'd have let mom go, they are afraid the baby will get away from them."

"The motion said that Texas law enforcement knew the phone call that prompted the raid was likely a hoax."

All from the Deseret News. More →

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The CPS wall starts to crack

If you do it for one family, you're going to have to do it for all of them.

The San Antonio Express-News - "A judge in San Antonio has ruled a couple from a polygamist sect can have daily visits with their three children and in 10 days will have a hearing to decide their custody, breaking them out of the terms of temporary state custody of all children taken from a compound set by a San Angelo judge last month."

It's turning. But the damage is already done.

"Joseph Jessop is 27, and Lori Jessop is 25, according to court documents. They're not in a plural marriage and lived in a single-family unit at the Yearning For Zion Ranch before the children were removed in the search, which began April 3. Joseph Jessop said he didn't see his children again until May 9.

'My baby didn't even recognize me,' he said."

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