Utah court reverses polygamist leader convictions

SALT LAKE CITY — 

The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out the 2007 conviction of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and ordered a new trial on charges of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her first cousin.

Jeffs, the self-proclaimed prophet of a breakaway Mormon sect, was sentenced in November 2007 to 10 years in prison for two felony convictions on charges he was an accomplice to rape.

But the Utah high court ruled that the trial judge erred in giving instructions to the jury.

Jeffs spent 15 months on the run and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list of fugitives before his August 2006 arrest during a routine traffic stop outside of Las Vegas.

He was convicted in September 2007 on two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice, stemming from his alleged performance of a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

Utah’s high court ruled that the judge in that case, James Shumate, erred in failing to tell jurors that they could not render a guilty verdict unless they determined that Jeffs knew unwanted sex would occur.

Jeffs is considered the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the FLDS, a polygamist sect that has an estimated 10,000 followers in Utah, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia.

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Mormon faith, renounced polygamy more than a century ago and tries to distance itself from breakaway factions that still practice it.

Jeffs was returned to Utah state prison last month from Arizona after similar charges against him there were dropped.

He also was indicted by a Texas grand jury in July 2008 on a charge of sexually assaulting a child following a raid on an FLDS ranch near the town of Eldorado. The charge is a first-degree felony that could carry a life prison sentence.

The Utah court ruling sparked outrage among opponents of the group.

“It makes me sick to my stomach that the system does this to victims,” said Flora Jessop, a former FLDS member and advocate for children still in the sect. “The victim has to go through (another trial) and be victimized by the courts, by the system that’s supposed to be protecting her.”

Jeffs’ attorney, Wall Bugden, said he was “thrilled” with the decision.

“We said from the very beginning that they chose the wrong crime to prosecute an unpopular religious figure,” he told Reuters. “They attempted to impute criminal liability to an unpopular person.”