Innocent! No Banking Fraud in Kirkland - Just Persecution

[_Scottie]

Just more proof that everything negative about Joseph Smith is just anti-Mormon lies, right?

[_harmony]

Early Mormon "bank" was legal
By Michael De Groote

Deseret News

Published: Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 8:13 p.m. MDT
SANDY — An Ohio court "got it wrong" when it convicted early Mormon leaders Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon for illegally running a controversial financial institution in 1837, a Mormon apologist said Thursday.

The Mormon leaders were running the Kirtland (Ohio) Safety Society Anti-Banking Company, but the 1816 law they were convicted under was not in force in 1837, said R. McKay White, a lawyer and an economist, during a presentation at the 11th annual Mormon Apologetics Conference presented by the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR).

When the Kirtland Safety Society couldn't get a bank charter, it reorganized itself as an "anti-banking" institution and issued private notes. The 1816 law prohibited private institutions from doing this.

White quoted several newspapers from 1837 to show the 1816 law was no longer being enforced by the time the Safety Society was organized. In an interview after his presentation, White explained further that the Ohio State Legislature did not print the 1816 law in its official book of statutes in 1824.

White told the conference participants that multiple institutions throughout Ohio ran similar operations without being prosecuted under the 1816 law.

"Now why weren't they, when Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were?" White said. "It couldn't be because of religious persecution. Well it was. It was intended to get Joseph out of town, and it worked."

Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had appealed the conviction, but ended up fleeing Kirtland for fear of their lives. The appeal was never heard.

Ye who scoffed at unchartered Anti-Banking, read this legal expose and weep! Think twice before you persecute the righteous.

This wasn't actually in the Deseret News, was it? All this time, I thought it was a spoof.

[_wenglund]

This why the need for the phrase: "Only In Provo"!

Here we have a Church trying to add legitimacy to the actions of a fraud (for the benefit of the isolated naïve) and not take any responsibility for the explanation. It uses the words of a non-credible member, posts it in their press to give bishops an out ("See, it was even in the newspaper"), and can distance itslef from any real position.

This is an exact replica of the lunacy Dallin Oaks attempted to used with his attempt to exonerate Smith's actions and the Expositor.

But I have no doubt it sells copies in Provo, and only in Provo!

Why would one pay to attend this kind of event??!!!

So, instead of thoughtfully engaging the well reasoned and documented arguments of people trained in the fields of law and economics, we are treated to the baseless dismissals and prejudices screetchings of an internet bafoon.

Really, is this the best that the anti's can do?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Eric]

I must be a prophet.

Yesterday:

And calling the fight is Wade Englund, the arguably closeted, gay curing guru whose usual weapon of choice is appeal to authority coupled with the "you're just ignorant" ad hominem argument.

You're in for quite a show, folks.

Today:

So, instead of thoughtfully engaging the well reasoned and documented arguments of people trained in the fields of law and economics, we are treated to the baseless dismissals and prejudices screetchings of an internet bafoon.

Really, is this the best that the anti's can do?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_wenglund]

"White explained further that the Ohio State Legislature did not print the 1816 law in its official book of statutes in 1824."

But was it published in a paper in 1816 or January 1817. I think that is all you need for it to go into effect.

The significance of White's statment is that there was an act in 1824 that was reasonably interpreted, by the lawyer advising Joseph on the establishment of the Society (the lawyer happened to be non-LDS), as an implicit repeal of the 1816 law that Joseph and Sidney were tried under in 1837. The fact that the Ohio legislature did not include the 1816 law in its statutes in 1824, lends credence to this legal interpretation. Such was one of several arguments to be offered on appeal had the appeal process reached fruition.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_wenglund]

I will state right up front that I haven't read very deeply about the Kirtland banking scandal.

I didn't see this gentleman's presentation, I'm only going by the summary of it that was given in the OP. Based on that, I'm having a hard time seeing how the fact that a law passed in 1816 "was no longer being enforced" means that what Joseph did was in fact legal.

It was my understanding that laws, once passed, were the law until they are overturned by a competent court as unconstitutional, or repealed by subsequent act of the legislature. Can the law become not the law simply by not being heavily enforced for 20 years or so?

Please see my post above.

Secondly, the status of the laws under which Joseph may or may not have committed a crime in forming the non-bank bank really doesn't bear on whether the actions of Joseph and the other officials were fraudulent. I would argue that a person could follow the very letter of the law in obtaining a bank charter and whatnot, and still turn around and defraud investors. I don't see how the OP bears on the fraudulent or non-fraudulent nature of the banking scandal.

I am not sure where the baseless assumption of "fraud" is coming from, but it has nothing to do with the charges brought against Joseph and Sidney--which had to do with their having issued notes supposedly in violation of the defunct 1816 law.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_harmony]

I am not sure where the baseless assumption of "fraud" is coming from, but it has nothing to do with the charges brought against Joseph and Sidney--which had to do with their having issued notes supposedly in violation of the defunct 1816 law.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

So this:

Enticing investors and depositors by misrepresenting the amount of capitol in the institution is fraud. More so when the money shown is a top layer covering sand.

wasn't fraud? If it's not fraud, what is it?

[_wenglund]

Enticing investors and depositors by misrepresenting the amount of capitol in the institution is fraud.

I am quite certain you don't know what you are talking about, but I will give you a chance to provide evidence that the amount of capital "in the institution" was misrepresented (not to be confused with the amount of capital that the Society hoped to raise--which varied from the first charter request to the second).

More so when the money shown is a top layer covering sand.

This is a canard that continues to by pandered by those ignorant of the dimensions of the Society's safe. The "bags of sand" claim is physically imposssible.

Next!

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_wenglund]

wasn't fraud? If it's not fraud, what is it?

Regarding the KSS, the charge of fraud is, itself, ironically a fraud perpetuated by the enemies of the restored gospel. No such charge was prosecuted by the state, and the claims by anti-Mormons to that affect are equally bogus. (See my posts above)

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_wenglund]

The Mormons, in this instance, were victims of bad timing, not religious prejudice.

I believe this is correct as far as denial of the charters is concerned.

However, I think a strong case may be made that religious prejudice was behind the trial of 1837, in which Joseph and Sidney were charged and found guilty of breaking the 1816 law.

Even the Tanners admit that, "there was widespread belief that the notorious Mormon hater Grandison Newel was behind it, that it was trumped up." (MSoR, p.533)

Several BYU scholars note that:

"the most interesting feature of the Rounds cases that were prosecuted against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon and that established the illegality of the Society is their apparent sponsorship. So far as we are aware, Samuel D. Rounds is a person having no prominence, or dealings with Joseph Smith for the Church and its members, except for these law suits. His name simply appears nowhere else. The Geauga County Execution Docket, however, states that the judgments against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were assigned to Grandison Newell, who sought to collect them, and did obtain partial satisfaction in the amount of $605. Newell was a bitter enemy of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. It apparently was general knowledge at the time that Newell was behind Round's lawsuits against the Society, for a contemporary citizen of Kirtand, reprinting in his personal reminiscences a letter from him to the Painesville Telegraph (that evidently was never published), says: 'The facts are that Perkins and Osborne were attorneys for Granison [sic] Newell in the prosecution of Smith and Rigdon for illegal banking.' Joseph Smith's assertion that the anti-bank litigation was stirred up by his enemies, a charge which has not been connected to Rounds, is most likely true, because it evidently refers to Newell. If this interpretation of the evidence is correct, Newell himself may have been guilty of stirring up and maintaining litigation in the names of others, which was a crime known as 'maintenance' at the common law." (Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, Larry T. Wimmer, BYU Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, p.441)

Thanks, -Wade Englund-