Judge with 3 wives ordered taken off bench

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A small-town judge with three wives was ordered removed from the bench by the Utah Supreme Court on Friday.
The court unanimously agreed with the findings of the state's Judicial Conduct Commission, which recommended the removal of Judge Walter K. Steed for violating the state's bigamy law.
Steed has served for 25 years on the Justice Court in the polygamist community of Hildale in southern Utah, where he ruled on misdemeanor crimes such as drunken driving and domestic violence cases.
Steed legally married his first wife in 1965, according to court documents. The second and third wives were married -- or "sealed" as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints refers to it -- to him in religious ceremonies in 1975 and 1985.
He has 32 children by the three women, who are sisters, court documents said.
Plural marriage was an original tenet of the mainline Mormon church, but the faith abandoned the practice in 1890. About 30,000 polygamists, who split from the main church into various fundamentalist sects, are believed to be living in Utah, the Southwest, Mexico and Canada.
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