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Oklahoma's attorney general is using a frontier-era statute to nail Robert Morris [1]
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Date: 2025-03-14
Trigger warning: discussion of child sexual abuse and grooming
In case you missed it, the bill finally came due for former megachurch pastor and Trump spiritual adviser Robert Morris on Wednesday, when an Oklahoma grand jury indicted him for molesting a then-teenage girl over 40 years ago. Morris had gotten away with it by insisting to anyone who would listen that he had been guilty of “moral failure” with a “young lady” in the 1980s. One problem—his victim, Cindy Clemishire, wasn’t merely a “young lady.” She was 12 years old at the time Morris began grooming and molesting her.
That lie finally caught up with him last summer, when Cindy found someone willing to listen to her—Dee Parsons of Wartburg Watch. Within a week, Morris was forced to resign in disgrace from the church he’d founded in 2000, Gateway Church in Southlake, near Fort Worth. Not long after that, Oklahoma state attorney general Gentner Drummond’s office launched a criminal investigation into Morris’s crimes—an investigation that only came to light when Gateway disclosed it in November. Later that month, this writer was the first to reveal Drummond was leading it. That investigation now has Morris facing charges that could potentially put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
The biggest bombshell of all is how Drummond found a way around potential concerns that the statute of limitations had long since run out. It turns out Drummond is relying on a statute dating back to frontier and territorial days to ensure Morris can’t simply run out the clock.
Drummond first hinted at this in an interview on Wednesday’s edition of “NBC Nightly News,” when he revealed the prosecution relied on an old Oklahoma statute that paused the statute of limitations if the perp didn’t live in Oklahoma at the time of the offense.
Drummond pounded heavily on this in announcing Morris’s indictment, arguing that the statute of limitations did not apply “because Morris was not a resident or inhabitant of Oklahoma at any time” during his grooming and molestation of Cindy.
Later, Drummond told NBC News that he and his team reached deep into Oklahoma statutes to find a way to nail Morris to the wall.
The prosecution turns on what Drummond called an “extraordinarily unusual” application of “a very old statute” that is most often used when prosecuting cold cases. More than a century ago, when outlaw cowboys roved the Old West committing crimes as they moved between states, Drummond said Oklahoma and other frontier states implemented a provision that essentially pauses — or tolls — the statute of limitations when someone commits a crime and then flees the state. Morris was a traveling evangelist who preached to crowds at churches and revivals across the Southwest when he entered Clemishire’s life in the early 1980s. Like the out-of-state marauders who terrorized Oklahoma towns in the early 1900s, Morris did not reside in Oklahoma, so Drummond said his office determined that the statute of limitations did not apply.
This seems to make sense on paper. A law like this could easily be used to prosecute people who come to Oklahoma for child sex tourism. If, for instance, a Jared Fogle were to show up, that person wouldn’t be able to duck prosecution simply by hightailing it back home and staying there until the clock ran out.
Drummond’s argument appears to lean heavily on the state’s history, one he knows well. His family has been in Oklahoma for almost a century and a half; his great-great-grandfather, Frederick Drummond, moved to what was then the Osage Nation, covering much of what is now the Tulsa metro area, in 1886. As a side note, Drummond’s second cousin is food blogger Ree Drummond, better known as “The Pioneer Woman” on Food Network.
At least one legal expert thinks there’s a there there.
Tracy Pearl, a professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, said the attorney general’s interpretation appears to be supported by case law. “And from a policy perspective, I think these sorts of provisions that toll the statute of limitations when somebody is located out of state makes sense,” Pearl said. “We don’t want to disadvantage the state or prosecutors in cases in which they may have a really limited ability to find the defendant and then extradite them back to the state.”
Pearl is an expert in technology and the law, so this case appears to be squarely in her wheelhouse.
Drummond also revealed that it was prosecutors in his office who spearheaded the investigation. After Cindy came forward, they asked him if they could launch an investigation. He didn’t hesitate to greenlight it, despite the risks involved. However, laws are supposed to set forth the bare minimum standard of behavior for living in society. Certain behavior is so egregious, falls so far below that standard, that it simply has to be investigated—if only so the historical record can show someone tried to do something. Say what you will about how red Oklahoma has become lately, but it’s refreshing to know Drummond’s lawyers understood this concept.
This was personal for Drummond as well. He has known Cindy’s family for years. Indeed, he represented her when Cindy tried to send Morris the bill for decades of counseling. Morris not only tried to make Cindy sign an NDA, but through his lawyers crassly insisted that Cindy brought this deal on herself when she “initiated inappropriate behavior by coming into my client’s room and getting into bed with him.”
Morris is due to turn himself in sometime next week. If I were his lawyers, I’d be having a very long and very unpleasant conversation with him. Unless they can challenge Drummond’s argument on the statute of limitations, if they have any sense they’re in plea bargain talks right now. The now-infamous press release in which Morris admitted to “inappropriate” behavior with “a young lady” amounts to a confession, and any jury would crucify Morris if Cindy gets on the stand.
From where I’m sitting, Morris has the legal equivalent of a sword of Damocles hanging over him. He faces a minimum of 15 years in prison if convicted on all charges—three years per count. The maximum is 100 years, or 20 years per count. Since he would have to serve 85 percent of his sentence before being eligible for parole, if he gets the max on all charges, he would die in prison. He would also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. My guess is something in the 20-30 year range. He was a minister at the time he molested Cindy, and he groomed her—making upward departure a near-certainty. From my perspective, any plea bargain or minimum sentence with less than 20 years would be a joke. By my math, at his age anything more than 20 years would be tantamount to a life sentence. That’s fine by me, since Morris has absolutely, positively forfeited his right to live among us.
The fact it even got this far is a major victory. As we’ve seen for much of the #ChurchToo era, a lot of cases of sexual assault by preachers never even make it to trial. That we’re at this point, and that Morris apparently has the deck stacked against him, should make survivors everywhere breathe easier.
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