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	Jeffs Trial: Juror: Sentence Not a Difficult Decision By Matthew Waller San Angelo Standard-Times August 10, 2011 http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2011/aug/10/jeffs-trial-juror-maximum-sentence-an-easy/ Mary Harris didn't want to talk about her experience as a juror when she got home. Her husband, Dan Harris, said that when she returned after the 13-day trial of Warren Jeffs, she didn't say a word about it. "She was out in the garden all day," he said. Nor did her daughter Nina Reid hear much about the jury experience, other than her mother saying "if she had a trash can she would've thrown up in it," Reid said. Mary Harris said she is happy to have the trial done with. Meting out the maximum sentence to Jeffs, she said, came easily to her and her peers after hearing days of testimony and evidence about group sex with underage girls, taking 12-year-old brides, and hearing the audio recording of ritual rape by the leader and spiritual head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. "I didn't feel like he was a man of God at all," Mary Harris said. Harris, a retired special education teacher living in Water Valley, said having experience with children made the trial hard for her to handle, and she said that although she feels good about the verdict, she is still concerned for the children at the FLDS Yearning for Zion Ranch in Schleicher County, where the assaults occurred. "I sleep like a baby at night, except for the ones left behind," Harris said. She said that at first she didn't know if she would be able to convict a "man of God" because she is a religious person. This was true during Jeffs' first speech that he gave in front of the jury, a speech about religious rights mostly that lasted almost an hour. "I was expecting it to be more difficult" to convict a religious person, Harris said. "I think God can speak to people." As the trial wore on, however, Jeffs' charm in speeches about religious rights wore off. The testimony she heard convinced her that she and he were not on the same religious page. "I kept thinking, no, no, this was not my God," Harris said. The hardest part of the trial was hearing the audio, she said, and hearing the tiny voices of girls responding to Jeffs as he asked questions of them and gave them explicit sexual instruction. The jurors also took note of documents that recorded Jeffs riding motorcycles and talking about having luxuries such as Porsche automobiles. They also took time to consider the meanings of terms such as "keeping sweet," which seemed to signify being obedient, and "heavenly sessions," which in some cases seemed to indicate orgiastic activity. "The penalty phase was so compelling," Harris said. "That's when the emotions really kicked in." The jury turned out the life-plus-20-years sentence after 40 minutes of deliberation; its guilty verdict on sexual assault of a child and aggravated sexual assault of a child took three hours and 45 minutes to reach. "I'm very relieved," Harris said.
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