County revokes ministers

Three ministers who married people at the now-shuttered Las Vegas Garden of Love wedding chapel can no longer preside over weddings in the state of Nevada.

Ministers must have permission to perform marriages in the state, and Clark County Clerk Shirley Parraguirre yanked that permission for the three men Friday because they had falsely filled out marriage certificates.

"The wedding industry is a huge industry," Parraguirre told Wendell Cuasito, the last of the ministers to face revocation. "To be fair to the public out there, and all these people who are coming in to get married, I don't feel I have any choice but to go ahead and revoke you, effective today."

Cuasito, Phillip Williams and Jesus Diaz can appeal the decision to District Court and also re-apply for what's known as a "certificate of permission to perform marriages."

Cuasito, who is listed as the executive campus pastor at the Beyond Walls International Church, said he won't appeal the decision.

"There's really no reason to," he said. "This is not my livelihood. We pastor a church, and so forth.

"She said she had to do what she had to do just to be fair to the public, and that's fine with me."

Williams and Diaz were not present for their hearings and have been advised by their attorney not to comment.

The marriage license problems came to light in October when the Las Vegas City Council was deciding whether to revoke the Garden of Love's business licenses.

At that hearing, the city attorney's office presented 17 marriage certificates from April 7 that listed chapel owner Cheryl Luell as a witness. However, travel receipts show that she and her husband were in Texas that day.

Williams officiated at 15 of those weddings, and Diaz performed two.

Nevada marriage certificates require that one person besides the minister witness the union.

After the chapel lost its licenses, couples started coming forward to question whether their marriages were legitimate.

Two local couples testified Friday that when Cuasito married them last year, Luell was not in the room, even though her name was stamped on their marriage licenses as a witness.

Cuasito said that Luell was probably in the building at the time of those ceremonies and that it was common practice -- at least for a while -- for ministers to stamp her name on the witness line.

He said he changed the way he filled out marriage certificates about eight months ago when a couple from a drive-through wedding challenged the name on the witness line. After that, he said, he made sure to introduce the couple to the person who was serving as their witness.

Luell was almost always in the building, Cuasito said, and she was the one who checked couples in and assigned them to chapels and ministers. And her name was used on the witness line as a way to reduce problems, he said.

"The way the operation was told to me to run is, she's the one who does it," Cuasito said. "People who have been doing it for 10 years, nine years and whatnot, they trained me.

"One of the reasons why we've been using her as a witness is, it would be a more valid witness in case there was a discrepancy or whatnot."

That's the exact opposite of what some couples are now experiencing. Charles and Elaina Vought were married by Cuasito last year, but they're getting married again just to make sure the union is valid.

"We feel victimized," Elaina Vought said in her testimony Friday. "I thought everything they did there was the way it was supposed to be done."

Attorney Frank Kocka represented Williams and Diaz at Friday's hearing. Kocka said he has advised both men not to talk about the situation because it might become a criminal matter.

He noted that during the Garden of Love hearing before the City Council, Mayor Oscar Goodman dispatched city marshals and Metropolitan Police Department officers to find the men and escort them to City Hall.

When they arrived, Goodman read them their Miranda rights, and since that time both men have been interviewed by police detectives, Kocka said.

"I have no alternative at this point other than to have them not make a statement," he said.

Las Vegas police did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or (702) 229-6435.