Third District Judge David Young came down hard on David Ortell Kingston but delivered perhaps a mightier blow to the practice of polygamy.
Young on Friday sentenced Kingston, a member of the polygamous Kingston clan, to two zero-to-five-year prison terms -- and ordered they be served consecutively -- for having sex twice with his then 16-year-old niece. Kingston was also fined $5,000 on each count and ordered to pay counseling costs for his victim.The sentences and fines are the maximum allowed for third-degree felonies. Because the sentences are to be served consecutively, Kingston could spend the next 10 years in prison.
He is likely to be paroled before then, but the penalties were much more severe than the six months in jail, two years' confinement in a halfway house and enrollment in a counseling program sought by Kingston's defense attorneys.
"We're surprised. We didn't expect it to be so strong, and we're happy about it," said Carmen Thompson, executive director of Tapestry of Polygamy, a group founded by ex-polygamous wives who now oppose the practice and want to help other women get out.
"This is the first judge we have seen that has a real understanding of what polygamy is."
Roweena Erickson, a former Kingston clan member, predicted the verdict was the beginning of the end of the Kingston clan and polygamy as a whole.
"I know they're shaking now. Their whole structure is beginning to shake. It's like a low-level earthquake," Erickson said of the Kingstons. "I want an end to it (polygamy) and I see an end in sight. I do."
In June a jury convicted Kingston, 33, of one count of incest and one count of unlawful sexual conduct. He was acquitted of two other incest charges.
During the trial, the victim testified she became her uncle's 15th wife in October 1997.
Polygamy was an underlying issue in the trial, but members of the eight-member, all-male jury said it did not play a factor in deciding Kingston's guilt. Young, however, said he believed polygamy was an issue that had to be considered in the sentencing.
"You can't ignore a 5,000-pound elephant in the living room," Young said of polygamy early in the 45-minute hearing.
Later, Young told Kingston bluntly that "your family is wrong" in its beliefs about incestuous relationships.
"You have been taught in such a way that relationships with nieces as plural wives is OK, and that is flat out not true," Young stressed. "In the relationships of family, in the relationships of marriage, in the relationships of conception of children, you are willing not to abide by the law."
Young said he saw no evidence that Kingston felt having sexual intercourse with his niece was wrong, or that Kingston had or would denounce that practice in the future.
In a brief statement to the judge, Kingston pleaded for mercy and said he cares about what happens to his niece.
"I have no hatred or resentment toward her at all. I feel sorry for her" because of what she has been through, Kingston told the judge. "I hope she has a real good life and gets out of life the things that she wants."
Kingston, whose oldest child is a 13-year-old son, said he didn't know what his family and children would do without their father.
Defense attorney Susanne Gustin-Furgis argued that Kingston could denounce polygamy and move on. She said he was a victim of "some misguided family instruction and teaching" and should not be treated by the courts like a compulsive sexual offender.
"Assuming Mr. Kingston is a polygamist as has been alleged, this is really a religious practice, it is not a compulsion, so he can be treated more easily," she told the judge in asking for the lesser sentence. "He is not going to be out molesting the community at large."
But Young made it clear that his concern was not for society as much as for the Kingston family and David Kingston's future relationship with family members. In his closing comments, Young referred again to polygamy, calling it a "mistaken, illegal doctrine."
Kingston plans to appeal the conviction and seek a new trial.
Young had previously denied defense attorney Todd Utzinger's motions to continue the scheduled sentencing and grant a new trial. A week after the trial ended, Kingston hired Utzinger to handle the appeal. He was represented by Gustin-Furgis and Steve McCaughey during the trial.
In Utzinger's motion for a new trial, he claimed prosecutors introduced "irrelevant and highly inflammatory evidence" about Kingston's polygamous background and that defense attorneys failed to suppress it. Young ruled there was no evidence of misconduct by prosecutors or incompetence by the defense.
Kingston's brother, John Daniel Kingston -- the girl's father -- is serving 28 weeks for beating his daughter for running away from her uncle. He pleaded no contest to reduced charges of child abuse.
The two brothers are the sons of John Ortell Kingston, late leader of the Latter Day Church of God, a group with about 1,000 members and a $150 million business empire in six western states.