Case Closed: Polygamist Leader Sentenced to Life in Prison
- Posted on August 9, 2011 at 8:37am by
Billy Hallowell
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SAN ANGELO, Texas (The Blaze/AP) — Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for sexually assaulting two underage followers he took as brides in what his church deemed “spiritual marriages.”
The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood quietly as the decision of the Texas jury was read Tuesday. 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.” In a show of unity, jurors deliberated less than half an hour.
The 55-year-old Jeffs, who had insisted on acting as his own attorney during the earlier part of the trial, was convicted Thursday. He walked out of the sentencing phase in protest after reading a statement 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.
“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 burning through seven high-powered attorneys, 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 defense 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 – crisscrossing 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.
In an audiotape played during the sentencing phase, Jeffs was heard softly telling five young girls to “set aside all your inhibitions” as he gave them instructions on how to please him sexually. Jeffs is heard telling the girls that what “the five of you are about to do is important.”
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. Several times in his journals, Jeffs wrote of God telling him to take more and more young girls as brides “who can be worked with and easily taught.”
FBI agent John Broadway testified that fathers who gave their young daughters to Jeffs were rewarded with young brides of their own. Girls who proved reluctant to have sex with Jeffs were sent away, according to excerpts from Jeffs’ journals that prosecutors showed to the jury.
Police raided the group’s remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families.
Jeffs is the eighth FLDS man convicted since the raid on Yearning For Zion, in the town of Eldorado, 45 miles south of San Angelo. Previous sentences ranged from six to 75 years in prison.
The church’s traditional headquarters is along the Utah-Arizona border, but it established the Texas compound in 2004. Jeffs once faced criminal charges in Arizona and was convicted of accessory to rape in Utah in 2007. But that was overturned by the state Supreme Court and he was extradited to Texas in December.
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Comments (46)
jzs
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 10:46pmIf the beliefs of one crazy Muslim means that all Muslims believe the same, doesn’t that mean that mean that the beliefs of this Christian are the same as every other Christian in the world? Or every Mormon?
RealAmerican2
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 11:29pmRidiculous.
Report Post »mdlwoods
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 8:26pmThank God that trial is over! Working in the legal field, trying to conduct business at the Tom Green County Courthouse has been h e double hockey sticks for the past 2 weeks! As for Jeffs, yes he deserved life for the rape of 2 girls because he doesn’t see anything wrong with that and would never repent. If he ever got out, he would go right back to “marrying” 12 year olds!
Report Post »deerjerkydave
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 6:51pmI’m curious to know what his followers think of all this. I‘m sure there will be those who will deny that he’s a pedophile, but will enough accept it to break away from him?
Report Post »hurlken
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 8:14pmWho gets life for 2 counts of sexual abuse
Report Post »HankScram
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 9:23pmMormon founder Joseph Smith was doing this to young girls 150 years ago – 16 year old Fanny Alger for example. Today mormons call him a prophet. But if he was doing that stuff today, he’d be sitting in a prison cell next to Warren Jeffs.
Report Post »TAKE_NO_PRISONERS
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 5:49pmThey have polygamy in in prison too.As I’m sure he will just be one of many bicthes in a prisoners harem.
Report Post »Bill Rowland
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 5:28pmWe are still supporting his wives and children – the whole community is a big welfare scam. Unmarried mothers, illigetimate children = food stamps, ADC, etc.
Report Post »1ntel
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 5:01pmGet your own website toughguy.
Report Post »MrKnowItAll
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 4:31pmJeff’s Recruitment Poster……Wanted: “Strong Backs, Weak Minds!” God Bless All Warren Jeff’s Victims. “I predict within a year Warren will end his own Life”. Prison will only be the beginning of his HELL!
Report Post »hotrod jim
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 4:02pmThis is still going on! Our country is out of money for these molesters. We who pay taxes are supporting this behavior. Stop them!
Report Post »jim
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 3:23pmWhat he did was more like rape, kidnapping and child abuse. “Marriage” was merely his cover for abuse and control of many victims.
Report Post »Secessionista
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 3:19pmHe was found guilty with a lawyer. Eschewing a lawyer offends everyone in the legal system, including the judges.
Report Post »thinkinghuman
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 3:01pmThat was quick. GOOD. What a wicked man.
Report Post »GulfPeg
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:44pmThis conviction of Warren Jeffs has given me a bit more faith in the justice system – you know after Casey Anthony!
Report Post »GulfPeg
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:43pmThey should take away welfare and food stamps from these women that are not legally married to an FLDS member. This will stop the men from having so many wives and will stop the women to take some responsibility for having so many children.
Report Post »brookd007
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:51pmNo, they ought to prosecute them for Medicaid fraud.
Report Post »SimpleTruths
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:59pmDon’t you understand that these women are severely brainwashed and they honestly think they are doing the right thing. Remember they have been subjected to this programming since they were children.
Report Post »LibertyGoddess
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 5:54pmIf it were only that easy. You would have to go after all the inner city teens who have baby daddies that don’t support them or marry them. These polygamists are on it. They know how to milk the system. They are just as bad as other cultures. They technically can’t be called polygamists either…they don’t legally get married. This group needs intervention, but on the scale of an atom bomb.
Report Post »brknhrt
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 7:26pmThese women are not doing anything that other welfare mothers are doing. Have kids, collect money, and live with a man you aren’t married to. His income won’t count and ka-ching!
Report Post »nysparkie
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:36pmBye Bye and please forget to write. I‘m sure all those convicts you’ll now be living with with treat you with the same respect you gave those under aged girls. So Don’t worry..”Be Happy!”
Report Post »johnj1952
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:31pmGood, now castrate the SOB!
Report Post »chubbzbar
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:17pmIt is about the power, not the molestation. You should read some of the books that have been written by “escapees” from the FLDS.
Report Post »mils
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:26pmThis faux leader should be put in general population for a few days…naked…
“Most” of these FLDS people don’t know better…they were born into and raised in this horror. They actually think we are the ones that are in the wrong and living a devils life….The ones that join as adults are the sickies…
Report Post »Realman30
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:06pmThis sentence is overkill and will not stand.
He’ll be out in 5 years. Book it.
Report Post »shirelover
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:15pmfine, let him out on foot in the middle of TX and stand back. Most texans I know will make sure he never harms another child again.
Report Post »brookd007
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:22pmThink again. This is Texas, not California.
Report Post »fliptailhunter
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 1:43pmWell it’s about time, nuff said.
Report Post »Bob DD
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 1:27pmDOUBLE STANDARD? The Boyz in the hood impregnate kids all over the place and they don’t go to jail?
Report Post »loriann12
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 2:07pmThis guy “marries” brainwashed 12 year olds. I don’t think many (if any) boyz in the hood who are 55 are impregnating 12 year olds. It’s not a double standard. If they find a black man who raped a 12 year old, he would go to jail, too. comments like this don’t help the racial tension we already have.
Report Post »LibertyGoddess
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 5:57pmActually, he’s right. Many other cultures abuse girls and abuse the system. This one just does it in the name of religion. Thank God Jeffs was stopped by sexing a 12 year old. Stupid TX had 14 on the books as a marriage age!!!! That’s why these nuts moved their compound to TX. Jeffs couldn’t be charged with those 14 and older.
Report Post »doglady
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 1:21pmRot in Hell Mr. Jeffs.
Report Post »thegreatcarnac
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 1:19pmThey should have known he was boinking little girls when he said he had to pick up his wife at elementary school.
Report Post »heyjim55
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 1:18pmNow he can become a joy boy of the prison system and find out what it is like being molested.
Report Post »Sail Away
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 1:10pmThis guy is such a pervert………Jesus was all about protecting children and the innocent…..”But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matt. 18:6
Report Post »Hiswill
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 12:59pmJustice is done. I hope he never gets out to hurt another child. They need to go after all those pediphiles in Jeffs so called churches. I’m sure the abuse is still going on and some sick, sick male will fill in where Jeffs left off.
Report Post »Kalish
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 12:52pmAnd Casey Anthony gets off scott free ? Not saying that this guy should not have gotten punished, but ……..
Report Post »SimpleTruths
Posted on August 9, 2011 at 3:08pmThe prosecution had solid evidence, the jury found him guilty, what is it about the justice system that you don’t understand?
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