Utah Refuses To Part Ways with Past: Polygamous Judge in Utah

In 1890, Utah abolished and outlawed polygamy as a condition of their statehood. However, an estimated 30, 000 practicing polygamists live in southern Utah. One of these polygamists, Walter Steed, is a judge in the town of Hildale, Utah. Although he is entrusted with the duty of enforcing the laws of the state of Utah, he lives in open violation of those laws and refuses to step down or recognize the obvious hypocrisy of his position. Judges are given one principal task: to uphold the law, and the most obvious way that they can do so is by observing the letter of the law in their own lives.

Judge Steed has adopted a piecemeal approach to this task. He observes the law as he sees fit. We have a name for such people in our society and in our law: criminals. Even though His Honor clearly acknowledges that Utah law forbids the practice of polygamy amongst its citizens, he has three wives. His justification for committing and continuing his criminal activity is quite simple: it isn't as bad as other crimes, and it does not prevent him from performing his job as a judge. Judge Steed and his lawyers believe that drug abuse would be reason for removal from the office he holds, but that other classes of criminal activity may not rise to such a level.

In other words, the law is negotiable. We may, as citizens and as law enforcement officers, pick and choose which laws are to be observed and which are to be disobeyed based on our personal whims. There really are no absolutes in the law per se. A sitting judge may decide that while one law is applicable to his life, another is not applicable, and he may proceed to flout that law openly.

Unfortunately, the Utah state supreme court and the attorney general of Utah agree by failing to disagree. The Chief Justice of Utah's Supreme Court, Christine Durham, decided not to remove a lawbreaker from a position that at its core involves seeing that lawbreakers are duly punished for their transgressions. The state attorney general also declined to come against Judge Steed. The Washington County prosecutor also failed to take prosecutorial action. The state of Utah as a whole has failed for many years to stamp out the lawlessness of polygamy within its borders.


The law banning polygamy in theory prohibits the practice of plural marriage, but in actual application (or lack thereof) it allows the practice to proceed and flourish even amongst its own jurists. As a result, it is a meaningless statute that reveals just how resolutely Utah refuses to break with its past in order to forge a future where laws are observed and lawbreakers are punished. Utah should take action against Justice Steed, but in a society where sexually libertine ideals have made great strides under the auspices of individual liberties, it is doubtful that Utah will take action.