By Matthew Waller
San Angelo Standard-Times
July 24, 2011
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2011/jul/23/jeffs-trial-set-monday/
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| Patrick Dove/Standard-Times Warren Jeffs is escorted out of the Tom Green County Courthouse Tuesday afternoon after a pretrial hearing. Jeffs' trial has been set for Monday. shot/archived 6.14.11 |
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Warren Steed Jeffs was no stranger to Texas before he was named to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in May 2006.
He was well-known to hundreds of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous sect living on the Yearning for Zion Ranch about 45 miles south of San Angelo.
It was in Schleicher County, prosecutors allege, that Jeffs sexually assaulted two girls younger than 14 and 17, according to a grand jury indictment.
Those allegations, five years later, have put him in front of 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, who has sentenced seven of his fellow sect members to prison on similar charges.
The trial begins Monday morning in Courtroom A of the Tom Green County Courthouse with jury selection, which is expected to take three days.
"The state is ready to proceed to trial," said Lauren Beam, a spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General's Office.
It may be a different story for the defense. As recently as Friday, Jeffs' latest attorney, hired days before, asked for more time to prepare.
At pretrial hearings last week, attorneys asked to remove Walther and expressed intentions to try to move the trial away from San Angelo.
Motions to remove the presiding judge were denied. A venue hearing may be held depending on whether a jury can be seated.
A motion to suppress evidence, the material gathered in the state's historic raid on the YFZ Ranch in April 2008, was sealed by Walther and will be heard during the jury-selection process.
Jeffs' most recent lead attorney, Deric Walpole, did not return phone calls Friday requesting comment.
The charges against Jeffs — aggravated sexual assault of a child, alleged to have occurred Aug. 6, 2006, and sexual assault of a child, alleged to have occurred Jan. 14, 2005 — are first- and second-degree felonies with the combined potential to put Jeffs in prison for up to 119 years.
Jeffs is revered as a prophet by his followers and despised by many outside the sect as the leader of a group that sanctions multiple partner marriages, some with girls younger than 14, as a tenet of its faith.
The trial will attract national attention, and once again allegations of wrongdoing by FLDS men will dominate the San Angelo court system.
Following the raid of the YFZ Ranch three and a half years ago, the downtown courthouse was at the center of the largest child custody case in the nation's history, with disposition of more than 400 children requiring the services of attorneys from every corner of the state.
Another outcome of the raid — which included seizure of truckloads of documents, electronic files, computers and photographs — was the indictment of a dozen men from the ranch on charges ranging from felony bigamy to sexual assault of a child. Seven of the men have been sentenced to prison.
On Monday it is Jeffs, the FLDS' leader, who will stand trial.
Special Prosecutor Eric Nichols, working with the Texas Attorney General's Office, is attempting something authorities in Utah and Arizona failed to do: secure a conviction against Jeffs. Cases and convictions in those two states were dropped or overturned a little over a year ago, clearing the way for Jeffs' extradition to Texas.
Allegations in those cases helped place Jeffs on the FBI list.
The San Angelo trial, which the defense has estimated could take longer than a month, will consider both counts of sexual assault. Jury summons have been sent out to 700 people.
Jeffs' day in court was slow in arriving, with Jeffs and his ever-changing legal team delaying the trial. Jeffs' teams filed numerous motions to remove Walther and to ask for more time to prepare for trial after changing attorneys.
On Nov. 30, Jeffs came to Texas. He was placed in the Reagan County Jail in the tiny rural community of Big Lake.
Jeffs celebrated his 55th birthday in the lockup. FLDS faithful visited him there. They also flooded the jail staff with hundreds of letters and notes.
About five months later, state authorities announced they had moved Jeffs to the Schleicher County Jail, six miles from the FLDS compound on Rudd Road.
Last week, Jeffs was in court three times in a last-minute, failed drive to postpone the trial. One motion attempted to change Jeffs' legal team once again.
The judge wasn't having it.
"I will not allow any attorneys to withdraw," Walther ruled Wednesday.
Jeffs' case and the FLDS again are generating major media attention. Several national news organizations are making plans to cover the trial.
Jeffs' time in Texas has also seen challenges to his leadership of the FLDS church, with a former bishop, William Jessop, claiming authority as presiding bishop and president through the Utah Division of Corporations and Commercial Code.
Jeffs' criminal woes stem from evidence collected during the historic raid on April 3, 2008. Jeffs was in jail in Utah on other charges at the time.
On that spring day, Texas law enforcement executed search warrants with the hope of finding on the ranch a girl younger than 17, her baby, born out of a sexual assault, and the baby's father. The call for help was placed on a local abuse hotline.
Many now believe the call was a hoax.
More than 400 FLDS children were taken from the ranch during the raid. They were returned by order of appellate courts, including the Texas Supreme Court.
During the search of the ranch, Texas authorities found Jeffs' name on hundreds of documents. He was listed as having performed marriages, including marriages of minors to men in their 20s, 30s or older. He was listed on transcripts of phone calls to the ranch, giving directions and having men receive special blessings. And he was listed on priesthood records detailing visions he received about how to run the FLDS church.
"In the heavenly session the Lord instructed me to voice certain of father's ladies should move out of Nevada and come to the state of Colorado to stay at Nathanael Allred's house and Shem Jeffs' house, and also that the ladies sealed to Wendell Nielsen should move north to be with his family in hiding in Fort Collins, Colorado," Jeffs states in a dictation taken from the ranch.
"Sealing" is often used to describe being placed in a "spiritual" or "celestial" marriage that FLDS members use to practice polygamy.
Twelve men were indicted using evidence from the raid. Seven men have been convicted, their sentences ranging from six years to 75 years in prison.
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