YFZ Search Warrant Was Not Obtained in Good Faith

2008-12-29 11:54:28

By Donald Richter

The Eldorado Investigation report released by CPS on December 22, 2008, brings into focus again all of the issues related to the raid on the YFZ Ranch. Among the most important of these is the validity of the search warrant that provided law-enforcement officials access to the Ranch in the first place.

A little before 6:00 p.m. on April 3, an APC (armored personnel carrier), two police cars, a cargo-carrier van, and a black Ford Expedition moved into position on the Griffin property north of the YFZ Ranch. Soon a SWAT team was hunkered down behind the APC in full gear, including body armor, helmets, face masks, machine guns, and other weapons.

At about the same time close to thirty police cars and unmarked vehicles arrived at the main gate to the Ranch. Schleicher County sheriff David Doran told FLDS men at the gate the now familiar story of a sixteen-year-old girl named Sarah Jessop Barlow, who had called a hot line alleging that she was pregnant with her second child, was being physically and sexually abused by her husband Dale Evans Barlow, and was being held as a prisoner on the YFZ Ranch.

The men told the officers that there was no Sarah Jessop Barlow in the community and asked whether the call had been traced to be sure that it was coming from the Ranch. When the sheriff replied that the number was blocked so that the call couldn’t be traced, the men said they understood there was technology available to get past a blocked number and that the whole thing sounded like a prank call, probably a Flora Mae Jessop deal. Doran dodged the issue and claimed that he had seen the locations described in the calls and that the caller would have to be inside the ranch to have included so many details.

There is ample evidence, however, that the Texas authorities knew, or should have known, that the calls on which their search warrant was based were bogus. Between March 29 and April 5, sixteen calls were placed to the Newbridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, Texas, from the alleged “Sarah.” Such calls were still going on while the raid was in progress. The same phone number was used to call a battered women’s shelter in Washington State numerous times between March 22 and April 8 with a similar story. There is no evidence, however, that a small army was assembled for an investigation anywhere but in Texas.

It is a well-known fact that these calls have since been linked to a 33-year-old African American woman in Colorado Springs named Rozita Swinton, who has a history of making false reports of sexual abuse.

The brother of Dale Evans Barlow, alleged husband of “Sarah,” arrived at the gate of the ranch about 7:15 p.m. and told the officers that no one in his brother’s family was named Sarah Jessop. He said that Dale did not live on the ranch and had never been there. By this time the officers had obtained Dale’s cell-phone number, and Sheriff Doran and Captain Caver of the Rangers went to the sheriff’s vehicle and talked to Dale, who lives in Colorado City, Arizona, and had not even been in Texas since a school trip in 1977. Dale gave the officers his driver’s license number to verify his identity.

Dale Barlow’s April telephone record from South Central Communications shows two calls from the same number in Texas at 6:20:42 p.m. and 6:24:59 p.m. MST on April 3. There are no other calls on the record from or to Texas. After the conversation the officers remarked as they returned to the gate, “Well, that takes care of half the problem. Now we need to find this Sarah Jessop Barlow.”

In the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant, Ranger Brooks Long claims that he learned from Sheriff Doran that Dale Evans Barlow was arrested in 2005 on a charge of “Conspiracy to Commit Sexual Conduct with a minor.” He also says that he obtained from the Mohave County Superior Court a copy of the judgment giving Dale Barlow a three-year probated sentence.

It does not appear that prior to obtaining the search warrant Ranger Long or any other Texas law-enforcement official made any effort to contact the Mohave County probation office to verify the actual whereabouts of Dale Barlow or to determine whether he could have been living in Texas as “Sarah” indicated. The affidavit states that it is the belief of Ranger Long that Dale Barlow is at the Ranch.

Before ever obtaining the warrant, Ranger Long should have exercised due diligence to locate Dale Barlow. Certainly, after the phone calls to Mr. Barlow, the officers had no reason to believe that he might be on the Ranch.

Due diligence also should have been exercised to determine whether the “Sarah” calls were even being made from the Ranch. According to the Washington Post of November 23, 2007, cell phones contain a GPS device and are routinely being used to pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives, and other criminal suspects. With the capability of homing in on a target within 30 feet, the very building in which a suspect is located can be identified.

It is true that courts are requiring law-enforcement agencies to show probable cause before requiring phone companies to release such information, but considering the massive military force assembled for the YFZ raid, the multi-million dollar expense to taxpayers, and the incalculable human cost about to be inflicted on children and parents, it is inconceivable that any court that would authorize a search warrant for the raid itself would be unwilling to authorize a request for a cell-phone location to find a domestic-violence victim.

It is also significant to note that when the officers arrived at the main gate and the military equipment and SWAT team moved into position just north of the Ranch, no search warrant had even been obtained. The first search warrant bears the date of April 3, 2008, at 5:50 p.m., by which time the invading forces already had arrived. According to an FLDS man from the Ranch, the sheriff, when asked how such a massive military force could be assembled so quickly, squirmed a bit before admitting that they had been setting up since March 31.

The FLDS men at the gate were not willing to admit the officers without a search warrant. They claim that they asked at least three times to see a warrant; and although one of the officers would go back each time, supposedly to obtain it, no warrant was actually presented until 9:00 p.m., at which time the first officers and CPS investigators were permitted to enter the Ranch.

One of the reasons the warrant was not obtained sooner may be the apparent judge shopping that took place. Two “Offers of Proof” filed in the District Court of the 57^th Judicial District in Bexar County, Texas, Cause No. 2008-CI-7631 both indicate that the warrant was first presented to Schleicher County judge Johnny Griffin:

“If Linda Werlein was called to testify and testified, she would state the following:

“My name is Linda Werlein and I am the Chief Executive Officer of the Hill Country Community MHMR Center since 2000….

“I placed a call to Judge Johnny Griffin, who is the county judge of Schleicher County and told him of my concern about separating the children from their mothers. Judge Griffin told me that this never should have happened and that, in fact, he had refused to sign the warrant authorizing the search and seizure.”

“If Wanda ‘Scooter’ Brown were called to testify, she would testify as follows:

“My name is Wanda ‘Scooter’ Brown and I have been the Director of Nursing at MHMR in Kerrville for the past four months….

“One day, Linda Werlein and I and a few other co-workers went to meet with Judge Johnny Griffin in El Dorado [sic]. We talked with him in his office. He told us that they had come to him first to get the search warrant signed, but he refused to do it because there was not enough information to rely on to support a search of the ranch. He told us that he was very upset with Judge Walther for signing it with no evidence to support the search. Judge Griffin also told us that his brother owns a ranch next to the YFZ ranch and they are some of the best neighbors. His brother also does business with the ranch and says that they are always kind and always pay their bills.”

For whatever reasons, Judge Griffin has since denied what he previously admitted. The Deseret News of June 30, 2008, quotes him as saying, “I did not sign it because it was never presented to me. It went directly to the district.”

The warrant treats the entire Ranch as a single residence, specifying that “Said Suspected Place and Premises includes all buildings, medical facilities, structures, places and vehicles on said premises and within the cartilage of said Suspected Place.” On May 16, 2008, CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins is quoted in an Associated Press release as saying: “This ranch was considered as a very large household.” He explained that CPS had treated the children as members of a single family and followed the usual practice of removing all of the children in a home where there is alleged child abuse.

The YFZ community has over 40 separate residences where children lived, as well as a number of trailer houses occupied by adults with no children. A few of the buildings were duplexes or four-plexes, but each family had its own living quarters with separate kitchen, living room, bathrooms, bedrooms, and laundry facilities.

In its Memorandum Opinion of May 22, 2008, the Third District Court of Appeals ruled, “The notion that the entire ranch community constitutes a ‘household’… and justifies removing all children from the ranch community if there even is one incident of suspected child sexual abuse is contrary to the evidence.” Thus, all of the interviews, searches, and seizures carried out on the faulty premise that the Ranch was a single household were performed illegally.

The real reason for obtaining the search warrant in the first place is apparent from a comment by Patrick Crimmins reported in Go San Angelo on December 24, 2008: “People may have lost sight of the fact that the reason we went to the ranch was to do this investigation.”

It is nice to see CPS admit what has been obvious all along. The massive military buildup before even obtaining a warrant, the failure to verify the evidence on which the warrant was based, the search for a cooperative judge, and the designation of separate residences and structures as a single household in an attempt to justify a gigantic “fishing expedition” all point to the fact that law enforcement and CPS were only waiting for a plausible pretext on which to invade the YFZ Ranch. As the subsequent investigation amply testifies, CPS and law enforcement never went in to find “Sarah”— she was just a convenient excuse.

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