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Blood Atonement
Tom Jones was singing "The Green Green Grass of Home" on my car radio as I swung into Idaho's maximum security prison parking lot. I walked up the sidewalk and through two security gates set amid twelve foot high pyramids of razor wire. Then a guard checked my ID, took my brief case, and checked me through what Rolf Kehne, the appeal lawyer, said would be "the most sensitive metal detector" I would ever go through.
I was subpoenaed as an expert witness in the death penalty appeal of murderer James Wood. I was to testify on the Mormon doctrine of blood atonement.
I had mixed emotions. Wood had confessed to the grizzly murder of an eleven-year-old girl-who he had abducted while she collecting for her paper route. No one has seriously doubted his guilt. He has in fact confessed to the crime. -more-
The Disappointment of B. H. Roberts
Brigham H. Roberts is revered in Mormon history as one of the Mormon Church's greatest theologians and historians. His six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church is still one of the most respected works of Mormon history. Roberts was a General Authority, member of the Mormon Church's First Council of the Seventy, a group which is second only to the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In 1898 he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, although he was never seated because he was a polygamist.
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Beyond Mormonism:An Elder's Story
No one who saw me deplane at Los Angeles International Airport would have guessed I was a candidate for religion. I did not look like part of any establishment, civil or religious. I stepped into the smog and noise of Los Angeles with a six-month growth of beard, wearing faded blue jeans, a sweater, and sports jacket. A half-pint of scotch stuck out of my jacket pocket.
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