Jeffs had asked to be taken back to jail, but Walther said that would make it too difficult for his lawyers to communicate with him. Instead, he was placed in a room near the court and will be allowed to return to the hearing whenever he chooses. The judge said Jeffs won't be able to dismiss his attorneys again and go back to defending himself, however.

He burned through a slate of seven high-powered attorneys, including Walpole and Detoto, in the six months before he decided to represent himself, and Walther said he did so in an effort to manipulate the court and stall the case against him.

All of that is separate from the assaults on two girls, ages 12 and 15, that Jeffs was convicted of Thursday, after jurors deliberated for 3½ hours. Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with the older victim and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting the younger one. They played other tapes in which Jeffs was heard instructing as many as a dozen of his young wives on how to please him sexually — and thus, he told them, please God.

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"The defendant abused not only his position, but those religious views you've heard about as a means of satisfying his own personal greed, desires and appetites," Nichols said.

Walpole responded by saying Jeffs was raised in the church and couldn't betray his own religious tenets. Jeffs took over leadership of the FLDS from his father.

"He would rather go to prison than disagree with those beliefs," Walpole said. "He'd rather make a complete mess of this case."

He later told jurors, "you've shown you can be tough. Now it's time to show you can be fair."