Edmunds Act

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The Edmunds Act, is United States federal legislation, signed into law on March 23, 1882, declaring polygamy a felony. The act not only reinforced the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act but also revoked the polygamists right to vote, made them ineligible for jury service, and prohibited them from holding political office.

The law was applied in an apparently ex post facto manner; that is, polygamists were charged for polygamist marriages solemnized before passage of the statute. A constitutional challenge to the statute was framed on these and other grounds. The Supreme Court ruled in Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U.S. 15 (1885), that the statute was not ex post facto because convicts were charged for their continued cohabitation, not for the prior illegal marriage . Modern scholarship suggests the law may be unconstitutional for being in violation of the Free Exercise Clause.[1]

These restrictions were enforced regardless of whether an individual was actually practicing polygamy, or merely believed in the Mormon doctrine of plural marriage without actually participating in it. This in effect became a religious test, where faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had their civil rights taken away without a trial or due process.[citation needed] Adulterers and fornicators had no such penalties applied and did not lose their rights.

All elected offices in the Utah Territory were vacated, an election board was formed to issue certificates to those who both denied polygamy and did not practice it, and new elections were held territory-wide.

[edit] Convictions

  • Rudger Clawson — August of 1882 — a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who was the first person convicted. He was pardoned by President Grover Cleveland mere months before his sentence was going to expire.
  • William J. Flake — 1883 — one of the founders of Snowflake, Arizona, who married his second wife in 1868. Was imprisoned in the Yuma Territorial Prison in 1883. After his release, when asked which of his wives he was going to give up, he replied, "Neither. I married both in good faith and intended to support both of them." As he had already served his sentence, he could not be retried on the same charges.
  • Abraham H. Cannon — 1886 — a member of the First Council of the Seventy of the Church and son of Apostle George Q. Cannon. Cannon as convicted of unlawful cohabitation in 1886 and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, which he served in full. In 1889 he became an Apostle of the LDS church.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ THE PRACTICE OF POLYGAMY: LEGITIMATE FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION OR LEGITIMATE PUBLIC MENACE? REVISITING REYNOLDS IN LIGHT OF MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL JURISPRUDENCE. Retrieved on 2008-02-04.
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