Could the trigamy defense work now?

Factual Questions
1

Accused of bigamy? Drag another wife out of the woodwork, invalidating both marriages you’ve been accused of in court!

In short, someone accused of bigamously marrying wife A in New York City while being married to wife B in Scranton dredges up a legal marriage to wife C in Detroit. Since he was married to C before both A and B, neither of those marriages are valid so the act of bigamy he’s been accused of cannot have occurred. He can presumably continue this process until the DA is so tired of it he goes to pick on someone else for a change.

I dug this one up in the rather idiosyncratic Stammtisch Beau Fleuve* Glossary, which cites My Day In Court by Arthur Train, published 1939.

*(This is an evocative name bound to drive you nuts. For your own mental wellbeing, know that Stammtisch is a German word meaning “regulars’ table” or “regular get-together” and the Beau Fleuve is a bed-and-breakfast in Buffalo, NY. The general tone of the glossary flows directly from this derivation.)

2

According to this web site, bigamy is defined as “the criminal offense of marrying one person while still legally married to another”. Your defense as proposed would simply make you guilty of multiple counts of bigamy.

3

Not to mention that if that defense worked bigamy would not exist as a crime because you could just say marriage B was not valid because you were already married to A. The question makes no sense.

4

I suspected as much. But the fact other people apparently believed it made me think there was something to this.

5

So, if a man marries three women, would he be guilty of one, two or three counts of bigamy?

6

None, because ‘bigamy’ isn’t a word. (It mixes Greek and Latin roots.)

(Aw, now y’all are gunna tell me that ain’t no way to run no courtroom nohow.)

7

So, no television in your courtroom, eh?

8

What’s this “courtroom” you refer to? Don’t you know you shouldn’t mix Anglo-Saxon and French roots?

9

There once was a fellow named Lime
Who married three wives at one time
When asked, “Why the third?”
He replied, “One’s absurd,
And bigamy, sir, is a crime!”