Negotiations for the state’s release of more than 460 children removed from a polygamist sect in April broke down Friday in a scene of chaos and bitterness in a courtroom in this West Texas town.
Lawyers for the families said the judge overseeing the release lacked authority to impose restrictions on it, and the judge, in disagreement, closed the proceedings and walked out of the courtroom.
The lawyers jumped to their feet, uncertain whether the proceedings had been adjourned, and some later vowed to bypass the judge, Barbara Walther of state District Court, and carry this new turn in the case directly to an appeals court.
“This is crazy,” said Gary Peak, a lawyer who represents two boys from the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Peak said the next step would be for lawyers to each file individual motions over the weekend to vacate the orders, issued by Walther last month, that authorized state custody of the children.
Reuniting of the children with their parents early next week had been expected after the Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state’s seizure had been overly broad and was not supported by evidence of sexual abuse. In fact, an agreement to release the children on Monday had seemed within reach earlier Friday.
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The hearing was partly overshadowed, meanwhile, by a new development in the continuing criminal investigation of the sect.
Investigators said records seized in the April raid of the group’s compound, the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, suggested that the sect’s leader, Warren Jeffs, had “spiritually” wed at least four underage girls, two of them 14 at the time, the other two 12.
Jeffs, 52, is serving 10 years to life as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl in Utah to marry and have sex with an older man against her will.
A spokesman for the Texas attorney general’s office said a warrant to obtain DNA samples from Jeffs was signed on Thursday by a judge in Arizona, where Jeffs is in jail awaiting trial on other charges related to underage marriage.