The Telegraph
August 9, 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8691828/Polygamist-leader-Warren-Jeffs-gets-life-in-prison-for-assaults.html
Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting two under age followers he took as brides in what his church deemed "spiritual marriages".
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| Jeffs, 55, who had insisted on defending himself during the earlier part of the trial, was convicted on Thursday Photo: AP |
The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood quietly as the decision of the Texas jury was read out. He received the maximum sentence on both counts.
Prosecutor Eric Nichols had asked the jury for a life sentence, saying the case was "a prosecution to protect people". Jurors deliberated for less than half an hour.
Jeffs, 55, who had insisted on defending himself during the earlier part of the trial, was convicted on Thursday. He walked out of the sentencing phase in protest after reading a statement on Friday that he claimed was from God, promising a "whirlwind of judgment" on the world if God's "humble servant" wasn't set free.
During the trial, prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old. 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.
Prosecutors suggested that the polygamist leader told the girls they needed to have sex with him – in what Jeffs called "heavenly" or "celestial" sessions – in order to atone for sins in his community.
"If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree," Jeffs wrote in 2005, according to one of thousands of pages of notes seized along with the audio recordings from his Texas ranch.
Jeffs claimed his religious rights were being violated. Representing himself after dismissing several lawyers, he routinely interrupted the proceedings and chose to stand silently in front of jurors for nearly half an hour during his closing arguments. He called just one defence witness, a church elder who read from Mormon scripture.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven, has more than 10,000 followers who consider Jeffs to be God's spokesman on Earth.
He spent years evading arrest – criss-crossing the country as a fugitive who eventually made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list before his capture in 2006, said lead prosecutor Eric Nichols.
Several former members of the church have testified that Jeffs ruled the group with a heavy and abusive hand. Jeffs also allegedly excommunicated 60 church members he saw as a threat to his leadership, breaking up 300 families while stripping them of property and "reassigning" wives and children.
Police raided the group's remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hair styles from the 19th century as well as seeing under age girls who were clearly pregnant.
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