Trial of FLDS Cult Leader Warren Jeffs Begins on Monday, by John Thomas Didymus, God Discussion, July 24, 2011

Trial of FLDS Cult Leader Warren Jeffs Begins on Monday

By John Thomas Didymus
God Discussion
July 24, 2011

http://www.goddiscussion.com/71069/trial-of-flds-cult-leader-warren-jeffs-begins-on-monday/

[with video]

The Texas trial of Warren Jeffs, polygamist leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will begin 9.00 A.M. on Monday after delays by Warren Jeffs.

Jeffs constantly changed lawyers, a move prosecutors claim to be tactics to stall a trial that could end in a life sentence. District Judge Barbara Walther refused to allow the case to be further delayed after Jeff's last lawyer Deric Walpole asked to be given six months to prepare his defense. The FLDS case has generated over 1.7 billion pages of discovery material.

Warren Jeffs had first been arrested in August 2006, during a routine traffic stop on interstate 15, Nevada, after he was included on the list of FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. He was extradited to Utah, where he was found guilty in September 25, 2007, of two counts of being in accomplice to rape. He was sentenced to ten years in prison but his conviction was later overturned. However, in April 2008, on suspicions of physical and sexual abuse of minors, Texas Child Protective Services and Department of Public Safety officers served search and arrest warrants and in the course of search operation rescued about 439 minors who were placed under temporary custody of the Child Protective Services.

The FLDS Church is one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist denominations and probably the leading sect in the practice of divinely ordained polygamy in the U.S. The church emerged as splinter group in the early twentieth century from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS Church) after the LDS Church suspended the practice of polygamy in the church and began excommunicating those members who refused to abide by the changes in doctrine and practice of polygamy.

The church subscribes to the doctrine of plural marriage which asserts that God requires that a man have many wives for salvation. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sets the minimum number of wives for a man's salvation at three. In the practice of the church, a woman considered of marriageable age is assigned to a husband by the authority of the leader of the church who is believed to receive a revelation from God; and the prophet is empowered to re-assign the same wives to other men as he receives revelations of their worthiness (The law of placing).

Warren Jeffs, who inherited leadership of the church from his father Rulon Jeffs in 2002, was charged with offenses of sexual assault and bigamy after the 2008 raid on his Yearning for Zion ranch. As far as the requirements for salvation according to FLDS doctrine is concerned, Warren has outdone his father in the practice of heavenly polygamy having married more than 60 wives against his father's twenty-two.

The FLDS Church which is believed to have about 10,000 members whose population is concentrated in Hildale, Utah; Colarado City, Arizona; Eldorado, Texas; Westcliffe, Colorado; Mancos, Colarado; Creston and Bountiful, British Columbia and Pringle, South Dakota.