It could be the case that launched a thousand prosecutions -- or maybe just as many regrets.

Thomas Arthur Green, a peacock of a polygamist and, by most accounts, a loving father and husband to five women, was charged with four counts of bigamy Monday for cohabitating with four women while legally married to a fifth.

Under the Utah's bigamy statute, it does not matter that the relationships were consensual. Yet winning a conviction under the state's prohibition against bigamy -- the act of marrying one person while still being married to another -- may prove just as problematic in Utah as a conviction for polygamy, the practice of having more than one spouse.

With the question of whether consensual cohabitation is a punishable offense hanging over the proceedings, Juab County District Attorney David O. Leavitt's case against Green is a legal gambit that will be scrutinized by polygamists, adulterers and self-styled swingers throughout the state.

A successful prosecution could focus legal scrutiny on any number of otherwise law-abiding polygamous families throughout the state, says Owen Allred, a polygamist and leader of United Apostolic Brethren. He fears that families will be torn apart if prosecutors start applying bigamy statutes to the estimated 30,000 members of such families in the Intermountain West.

"If we aren't doing anything contrary or unreasonable, they shouldn't be justified in using these laws," Allred said.

In the court of public opinion, Green will stand trial as an old-style polygamist and religious martyr whose case is billed by some as the touchstone to another showdown over Utah's 104-year constitutional ban on the practice of polygamy. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced plural marriage in 1890 and today excommunicates members who practice it.

"This is the terrible thing about polygamy -- there are so many innocent lives that are being drowned in a terrible sin,"

says state Sen. Scott N. Howell, D-Sandy, a candidate for Congress who has sponsored legislation to investigate crimes unique to polygamist groups.

"This thing has just gone on too long, it is too convoluted, too immoral and it's hurting too many innocent people," Howell says. "David Leavitt is my hero."

Leavitt, who is the younger brother of Gov. Mike Leavitt, says he began investigating Green last year after the polygamist appeared on NBC's "Dateline" newsmagazine program at a time when two members of Utah's polygamous Kingston family were being prosecuted for child abuse and child sexual abuse.

The investigation has been an odd pursuit from the outset.

Leavitt and Green have amicably met for more than a year at Greenhaven, the polygamist's homestead at the edge of Utah's west desert. Green claims the county attorney once brought his wife to meet Green, his wives and some of their children.

And a month ago, Leavitt and state Rep. David L. Zolman, R-Taylorsville, drove to Green's secluded outpost to discuss what Green claims was a legal strategy designed to challenge Utah's bigamy statute and its polygamy prohibition, the only outright ban in the nation.

Leavitt disputes Green's recollection of their conversations. Zolman has proposed that Utah consider removing the state constitution's ban on polygamy. But after meeting Green and talking with Leavitt, he says his stance has softened.

"I want a broader approach," Zolman says. "We have 100 years of neglect and hostility [toward polygamists] and none of that has worked. We must try something else, but I don't know what that is going to be. This is not an easy thing."

Although Green believed he was part of a larger philosophical battle over the legality of polygamy, he has been lured into a fight for his life. In what seemed to be a surprise to his lawyer, Green also was charged by Leavitt with a sex crime -- for allegedly fathering a child with one of his "wives" when she was 13 -- and felony non-support of some of his 29 children.

If convicted on all charges, Green, 51, could serve the remainder of his days in prison. Leavitt's prosecution strategy, Green recently said, has become a "polygamist pogrom."

"I am not afraid to go to jail or prison for my religious beliefs," he wrote in a 1999 letter to Leavitt." To do so would be to follow in the footsteps of some noble men. [But] it would be an inconvenience for my family."

At the same time, Green, a paralegal who prides himself on his knowledge of both religious doctrine and legal nuances regarding polygamy, admits his mounting difficulties.

"While I am convinced that it is my constitutional right to live my religion the way I understand it," he wrote to David Leavitt in 1999, "I don't think I would prevail in a constitutional battle."

Legal Precedent: Indeed, legal precedents do not bode well for Green if he chooses to mount a constitutional defense. As recently as 1997, U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson in Salt Lake City called polygamy "unquestionably unlawful" in a ruling concerning fair housing. And in the 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Murray City's firing of police officer Royston Potter because of his marriages to three wives.

Still, Leavitt must prove Green was legally married to one woman while cohabitating with the others to win a bigamy conviction. The prosecutorial "prong" of the statute reached an investigative nexus when Leavitt, according to Green, attempted to force one of Green's wives during a deposition to admit she was his lawful wife. Leavitt also has petitioned the court to declare Green's marriage to one of his "wives" legal since 1990.

In an apparent attempt to avoid the very bigamy prosecution he finds himself facing today, Green has staggered his court-sanctioned marriages. Over the years, he has officially been married and divorced from three of his current "wives," and unofficially -- without a marriage license -- wed the other two. The women were apparently 14 or 15 years old when they were wed to Green, which under Utah law at the time was permitted with the consent of the girls' parent or legal guardian.

Green has been a prominent, passionate and vocal defender of his polygamist beliefs, but on the advice of his Salt Lake City attorney, John Bucher, he has not spoken publicly since the charges were filed April 17. Bucher, however, believes the rare prosecution -- only a handful of Utah polygamists have been prosecuted on bigamy charges in the past half-century -- has more to do with polishing Utah's image than seeking justice.

"I'm concerned that this whole thing has something to do with a broader agenda," he says. "It has to do with the political climate in the state and how it relates to the perception of Utah by others. It's motivated by people who want to do something about Green because he's drawing too much national attention to Utah."

Behind the scenes, David Leavitt has conferred with the Utah Attorney General's Office on how to proceed. That alliance has fueled speculation by some Utah polygamists and their supporters that Gov. Leavitt is orchestrating the case against Green through his younger brother.

"Because it is a volatile issue and Mr. Leavitt is Gov. Leavitt's brother, [David Leavitt] feels particularly encouraged or required to take a position that enforces this particular law,"

says Bill Morrison, the attorney for Green's wives. Prosecutors have offered immunity for the wives' testimony. Each has refused.

Gov. Leavitt's spokeswoman, Vicki Varela, said the Green case

"is not something that [David Leavitt] has gotten strategy from the governor on. It is a legal issue. He's approaching it as a legal issue. The governor is the CEO of the state and does not get involved in county-by-county legal issues."

Assistant Utah Attorney General Reed Richards also discounts claims of collusion against Green on Utah's Capitol Hill and downplays speculation that a successful prosecution would pave the way for bigamy charges against other high-profile Utah polygamists.

"I don't see that we have any kind of a mandate," Reed says. "My view all along is we should focus on the abusive situations within polygamist communities and certainly child abuse should be investigated fully. As for the other [cases against Utah's polygamists], we will just have to see what happens."

Utah's most prominent prosecutors also deny there is an organized effort to rid Utah of its polygamist subculture, a social segment that has preserved itself since the LDS Church abandoned the practice.

The clause banning the practice was attached to the Utah Constitution before statehood was granted in 1896.

"No one has asked me to go out and prosecute any polygamists,"

says Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom, whose district is home to the nation's largest polygamist group, United Apostolic Brethren.

"And besides, I don't initiate investigations," says Yocom. "Just because [some] guy admits to [having multiple wives] is not sufficient to charge him with a crime."

The state's ban hasn't been enforced since the 1953 raid on Short Creek, a polygamist community on the Utah-Arizona border. Half a decade ago, Arizona authorities teamed with leaders of the LDS Church to dismantle the polygamist enclave, a plan that famously failed. At 4 a.m. on a Sunday, under a full moon, children and fathers were pulled away from mothers and wives. It was a political catastrophe -- one that won't be repeated today.

"That's not going to happen," Yocom acknowledges.

Different Strategies: Recently, though, rural county prosecutors have used the less-dramatic bigamy approach to punishing polygamy, charging two central Utah men under the statute. Both men settled before trial.

Mark Easterday of Monroe, in Sevier County, pleaded no contest to adultery after prosecutors showed a videotape of a deposition in his divorce proceedings in which he admitted to marrying a second woman. Easterday, who claims to be a "fundamentalist Mormon" and teaches his nine children the doctrine of polygamy in his home, told the judge he entered his plea because "my back is against the wall."

Steve T. Bronson of Hinckley pleaded guilty in abeyance to a bigamy charge in a separate case in Millard County. In what is perhaps a uniquely Utah arrangement with the court, 4th District Judge Gary D. Stott agreed to dismiss the guilty plea in a year if Bronson lives exclusively with his lawful wife.

In each case, the anti-polygamy group Tapestry of Polygamy pushed for the prosecutions. Tapestry leaders, who Reed of the Attorney General's Office says had no part in the case against Green, nonetheless relish Green's dilemma.

"This will open the floodgates," says Tapestry co-founder Rowenna Erickson. "This is the first brick to fall in the Berlin Wall of polygamy."

Morrison, the attorney for Green's multiple wives, says that notion is preposterous.

"It's a silly characterization."

Last year, Green filed a $60,000 defamation lawsuit against Tapestry, its leader, Carmen Thompson, and attorney Douglas White, claiming they made statements that Green engaged in incest and that his children were abused and poorly educated.

The case against Green differs from recent high-profile prosecutions of polygamists John Daniel Kingston and David Ortell Kingston. The Kingston cases were primarily about unlawful sex and child abuse, not polygamy.

Although court testimony alleged David Kingston had multiple wives, he was never tried as a bigamist. Instead, he was convicted for having sex with his 16-year-old niece. John Kingston, the girl's father, pleaded no contest to third-degree felony child abuse for whipping his daughter when she tried to get away from David Kingston.

Still, the Kingston family, like many in the Intermountain West, are keeping tabs on the case against Green.

"I haven't seen any indication that there is [a statewide effort to charge all polygamists],"zsays Carl E. Kingston, an attorney for the Kingston family. "I don't know what [David Leavitt's] motives might be, but it may be from neighbors and it may just be from Tapestry."

Echoed Allred, leader of Apostolic United Brethren:

"I am very concerned about this case."