By Emanuella Grinberg
Court TV
September 25, 2007
http://www.courttv.com/trials/jeffs/092507_verdict_ctv.html
St. george, Utah — A jury in Utah found polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs guilty Tuesday of forcing a 14-year-old to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin against her will.
Jeffs, 51, was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in the arranged marriage of Elissa Wall and Allen Steed in 2001. He faces five years to life in prison on each count when he is sentenced at a separate hearing.(VIDEO)
Jeffs appeared calm and showed no reaction as the verdict was read.
Jurors deliberated for just three hours before reaching a verdict after a panelist was dismissed and then replaced for undisclosed reasons. The original jury began deliberations Friday.
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| Warren Jeffs was found guilty Tuesday of two counts of rape as an accomplice for coercing a 14-year-old girl to marry her older cousin and have sex with him. |
Washington County prosecutors alleged that Jeffs used his position of authority as the leader and "prophet" of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) to "entice" Wall into going through with the marriage, despite her objections that she was too young.
Wall, now 21, told jurors that she felt her patriarchal culture trapped her into going through with the marriage.
Less than three weeks after Jeffs married them in a legally nonbinding ceremony in a Nevada hotel, Wall claimed, Steed raped her while she protested.
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When she reported the rape to Jeffs, the spiritual head of the FLDS, he told her to go home and "repent" and "be a good wife" to her husband, according to Wall.
Prosecutor Brock Belnap praised Wall after the verdict was announced, calling her "a pioneer" for her courage to come forward.
"There always has to be someone who goes first," he said. "I hope that her example will shine a light of hope for others who might be in similar situations."
Steed, now 26, testified for the defense that he never raped his wife, claiming that the use of force is forbidden in the FLDS.
Speaking after the verdict Tuesday, jurors said that the youth of the victim weighed heavily on their decision to convict Jeffs.
"He was the only one who could have released her. He ultimately held all the keys to say, 'You don't have to be in this marriage and there wont be any consequences'" one of the jurors, Benjamin Coulter, 26, said.
Lawyers for Jeffs claimed that he merely counseled the teen in a manner consistent with his religious beliefs. In the defense closing argument, lawyer Walter Bugden accused authorities of making Jeffs into a scapegoat for his controversial religion, which broke from mainstream Mormonism in the 1890s over the practice of polygamy.
Belnap countered that religious beliefs cannot be used as a defense by a person accused of criminal activity.
Despite what she went through as a teenager, Wall said Tuesday that she was not trying to attack the FLDS community as a whole by her allegations against Jeffs.
"I have very tender feelings for the FLDS people," she said. "This trial has not been about religion or vendetta. It was simply about child abuse and preventing abuse.
"The easy thing would have been to do nothing, but I have followed my heart and spoken the truth," she said.
Jeffs was arrested in 2006 after spending more than a year on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
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