The Browns, a polygamous family that stars in their own TLC reality series "Sister Wives," fear that they will be prosecuted for practicing polygamy in their home state of Utah where polygamy is banned, local news station Fox 13 Salt Lake City reported. However, a spokesperson from the Utah Attorney General's Office said that prosecutors won't prosecute the Browns for bigamy.
"The practice of the Utah Attorney General's office is not to prosecute polygamists living in Utah under Utah's criminal bigamy statue merely because of their polygamist practice," Parker Douglas, Utah's Federal Solicitor, wrote in court documents obtained by Fox 13.
Bigamy- the act of marrying one person while being legally married to another- is illegal in Utah. Kody Brown, the patriarch of the Brown family, is legally married to wife Robyn while spiritually married to Meri, Christine and Janelle.
TLC's "Sister Wives" depicted the family's polygamous lifestyle, and Utah authorities said that they were aware of the Browns before the show premiered in 2010, according to the Associated Press. The family was under investigation but was not charged with any crimes.
After the family moved from Utah to Nevada to avoid potential prosecution, they filed a lawsuit against the appeal of the upheld polygamy ban in Utah, as HNGN previously reported, and claimed that it infringes on their constitutional right to religious freedom.
The ban was shut down by U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups in 2013 because he claimed that it violated the family's religious freedom, but it was appealed by the state. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear arguments in favor of lifting the polygamy ban later this month.
Utah is in favor of keeping the ban on polygamy in the state so that they could have legal grounds to prosecute crimes that occur in polygamist families, according to AP, citing notorious Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) leader Warren Jeffs' current incarceration for sexual assault, statutory rape and welfare fraud.
