It's tough being a polygamist, court told

Polygamist Tom Green broke down on the witness stand as he described the hardships his family underwent as they pursued their unconventional lifestyle.

Testifying in the first major Utah polygamy case in decades, Green described being evicted from a Salt Lake City trailer park and moving his five wives and their dozens of children into a homesteaders’ barn on a barren patch of land in the Utah desert.

He also explained that he became a polygamist after studying "my history, the history of my family, the history of my faith and the history of my state".

Green, 52, is charged with four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal failure to pay back child support. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

He cried as he described a 1997 fire that destroyed the family’s home and killed his three-year-old son. He was comforted by three of his wives.

Prosecutors have tried to paint the family’s life as one of such desperation that they were forced to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in public assistance.

But defence lawyer John Bucher tried to show that Green, who sells magazines for a living, did his best to provide for his wives and children.

He put Green’s eldest son, Melvin, on the stand and propped up a picture of the family Boy Scout troop showing six of the boys in their uniforms.

"In your life ... have you always had shelter and a place to live?" Bucher asked.

"Have you been able to have schooling? ... Have you been able to engage in scouting and sports?"

The 14-year-old answered yes to each question.

Green’s business partner and Melvin’s namesake, Mel Poulsen, was less helpful. Juab County Attorney David Leavitt brought up previous testimony in which Poulsen criticised the Greens for "taking advantage of" public assistance.

Green said that his own persecution drove his family onto welfare.

"If we could live in Salt Lake like everybody else, we wouldn’t have had all these problems and need all that assistance," he said.

Green’s former lawyer testified that his client never thought he was legally married. To make its bigamy case, the state must show that Green was married to one woman and cohabited with the others.

"He didn’t believe he was married in the eyes of the state. He had no paper, no solemnisation," William Morrison testified.

During cross-examination, prosecutor Monte Stewart tried to cast doubt on Morrison’s motives by pointing out that members of his family are polygamous.

Morrison’s daughter, Mary Batchelor, is a former polygamous wife and one of the state’s most outspoken supporters of plural marriage.

Green believes religious freedom protects his right to marry more than one woman. Most of the estimated 30,000 people practising polygamy in the West trace their roots to early Mormon doctrine, even though The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned the practice in 1890 and excommunicates polygamists.

But Judge Guy Burningham has decreed that the question of religion must not come up in Green’s case.

"Religion is not a defence in a criminal case," the judge told the jury earlier in the week.