Edmunds Act

Convictions

More than 1,300 men were imprisoned under the terms of the Edmunds Act. It appears that women were not prosecuted, being seen as victims of the practice and not willing participants, although a number refused to testify against their husbands and some were jailed for their refusal.

• Rudger Clawson — August 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 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.
• Angus M. Cannon — 1885 — a stake president, member of the Council of Fifty, and younger brother of apostle George Q. Cannon. Cannon was sentenced to six months imprisonment and a $900 fine. Cannon was the appellant in the case of Cannon v. United States, which was decided by the Supreme Court in 1885. Cannon's appeal was because he had immediately ceased having sexual relations with the two wives he was accused of cohabiting with after polygamy was criminalized. The Court rejected Cannon's argument, holding that "[c]ompacts for sexual non-intercourse, easily made and easily broken, when the prior marriage relations continue to exist, with the occupation of the same house and table and the keeping up of the same family unity, is not a lawful substitute for the monogamous family which alone the statute tolerates."
• John Sharp — 1885 — a bishop, member of the Council of Fifty, territorial chairman of the People's Party, director for the Union Pacific Railroad, Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution, Deseret Telegraph, and Deseret National Bank. Sharp initially pled not guilty, but withdrew his plea and pled guilty to the charge. He was fined $300 and court costs. The New York Times criticized the church's removal of Sharp and suggested that it "reveals again the stubborn character of the Mormons' opposition to the law".
• Lorenzo Snow — 1885 — a church apostle at the time. In late 1885, Snow was indicted by a federal grand jury for three counts of unlawful cohabitation. According to his indictments, Snow had lived with more than one woman for three years. The jury delivered one indictment for each of these years, and Snow was convicted on each count. After conviction, he filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court which convicted him. The petition was denied, but federal law guaranteed him an appeal to the Supreme Court. In Ex Parte Snow, the Supreme Court invalidated Snow's second and third convictions for unlawful cohabitation. It found that unlawful cohabitation was a "continuing offense," and thus that Snow was at most guilty of one such offense for cohabiting continuously with more than one woman for three years. Snow became president of the LDS Church in 1898.
• Abraham H. Cannon — 1886 — a member of the First Council of the Seventy and son of apostle George Q. Cannon. Cannon was convicted of unlawful cohabitation in 1886 and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, which he served in full. In 1889 he became a church apostle.
• David John — 1887 — Provo stakeholder and Vice President of the Brigham Young University Board of Trustees. John married a second wife, Jane Cree, in 1865. He had nine children with Mary and 11 children with Jane. In 1887, he spent time in prison for violating the Edmunds Act.
• George Q. Cannon — 1888 — a church apostle and former non-voting delegate for the Utah Territory in the United States Congress, before the passage of the Edmunds Act. Cannon surrendered himself to authorities and pled guilty at trial to a charge of unlawful cohabitation. As a result, Cannon served nearly six months in Utah's federal penitentiary.
• Heber J. Grant — 1899 — a church apostle at the time. Grant pleaded guilty to unlawful cohabitation and paid a $100 fine. Grant became president of the LDS Church in 1918.
• Joseph F. Smith — 1906 — LDS Church president. Smith was brought to trial on a charge of unlawful cohabitation with four women in addition to his lawful wife; he pled guilty and was fined $300, the maximum penalty then permitted under the law.

References

References

1. U.S.History.com, [http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h734.html Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882].
2. ""The Edmunds Act"".
3. About Mormons, [http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/history/plural_marriage/Legislation_EOM.htm Anti-Polygamy Legislation]. Accessed 2008.03.26.
4. "Struggle For Statehood Chronology". State of Utah.
5. See also [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D05E6DC1030E433A25757C2A9659C94649FD7CF "The Anti-Polygamy Law; Its Constitutionality Upheld by the Supreme Court"], ''The New York Times'', March 24, 1885, p. 3.
6. Vazquez, Richard A.. (Fall 2001). "The Practice of Polygamy: Legitimate Free Exercise of Religion or Legitimate Public Menace? Revising ''Reynolds'' in Light of Modern Constitutional Jurisprudence". [[New York University School of Law]].
7. Jt. Res 11., 53d Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Stat. 980
8. Whittaker, David J. “Prisoner for Polygamy: The Memoirs and Letters of Rudger Clawson at the Utah Territorial Penitentiary, 1884–87. Edited by [[Stan Larson]]. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
9. [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1885/12/15/103092194.pdf "The Anti-Polygamy Law; Ex-Delegate Cannon's Sentence Affirmed. The Supreme Court Upholds the Decisions of the Territorial Judges; Opinions in Other Cases"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', 1885-12-15.
10. {{ussc. 116. 55. 1885.
11. [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1885/09/25/103636292.pdf "Mormon Bishop Sharp.; He Tells About His Plural Marriages, Pleads Guilty, and is Fined"], ''The New York Times'', 1885-09-25, p. 5.
12. As a result of pleading guilty, rather than plead not guilty as other LDS Church leaders had done, Sharp was asked by the [[Stake (Latter Day Saints). stake]] [[High council (Latter Day Saints). high council]] and the [[First Presidency (LDS Church). First Presidency]] to resign as bishop of the Salt Lake Twentieth Ward, which he did on 3 November 1885.J. Max Anderson (1979). ''The Polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact'' (Salt Lake City, Utah: Publishers Press) ch. 2.
13. [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1886/09/05/103977443.pdf "A Mormon Bishop Deposed"], ''The New York Times'', 1886-09-05, p. 6.
14. {{ussc. 120. 274. 1887
15. Cannon, Joseph A.. (1994). "Utah History Encyclopedia". [[University of Utah Press]].
16. ''Salt Lake Daily Tribune'', 1899-09-09.
17. ''Deseret Evening News'', November 23, 1906; ''Salt Lake Tribune'', November 24, 1906.