FLDS Elder in Eldorado TX is convicted of Sexual Assault of an underaged girl…

Jury convicts Raymond Jessop

ELDORADO, Tex. — One of the leaders of a polygamist sect was convicted Thursday night of sexually assaulting an under-age girl whom the church elders had assigned to him as one of his nine wives.


A jury of seven men and five women deliberated 2 hours 20 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty in the first trial of a dozen members of the Yearning for Zion Ranch just outside this rural hamlet in West Texas.

The defendant, Raymond M. Jessop, 38, seemed unperturbed as Judge Barbara Walther of State District Court read the verdict. Mr. Jessop was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody by the Schleicher County sheriff. He smiled and nodded to several other men in his religious group, who sat grave-faced as he was led away.

Mr. Jessop will be sentenced after a second hearing before the jury on Monday. He faces penalties ranging from 2 years’ probation to 20 years in prison.

His lawyer, Mark Stevens, declined to say if he would appeal, though the defense had argued in hearings before trial that the state illegally seized the church documents that were crucial to the case during a raid on the ranch in April 2008.

Mr. Jessop is one of the most prominent members of a breakaway sect that has at least four other communities in Arizona and Utah. He is close to Warren S. Jeffs, the self-styled prophet and leader of the sect.

Mr. Jeffs has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape, a charge related to his role in ordering the “spiritual marriage” of an under-age girl to one of his followers. He is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges and has been charged in Texas with sexual assault and bigamy.

The trial of Mr. Jessop offered a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group that split from the Mormon Church. Followers believe polygamy brings heavenly rewards and treat Mr. Jeffs as a modern-day prophet.

The ranch first came to national attention a year and a half ago when the Texas authorities descended on it, seeking a girl who had complained in a telephone call to a San Angelo women’s shelter that she was being sexually abused. The girl was never found, and the Texas Rangers acknowledge that the tip was a hoax.

But in the course of executing search warrants, social workers and the Rangers uncovered evidence that at least a dozen girls had been coerced by church elders to serve as wives to older men. Seven had borne children.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols, put several Rangers on the stand along with a former member of the church to introduce several church documents seized from a vault on the ranch.

Since the woman said to be the victim, who is now 21, did not testify, Mr. Nichols used the documents, along with her photo album, to prove she lived with Mr. Jessop as one of his wives and was impregnated by him when she was 16.

The state’s case also rested heavily on genetic evidence that showed there was a 99.9 percent chance Mr. Jessop was the father of the child, who is now 4.

In his closing argument, Mr. Nichols attacked the theory that the teenager had consented to be Mr. Jessop’s wife. “Any act of sexual assault is a horrendous crime,” he said, “but an act of sexual assault on a child is of such an extreme nature we don’t even consider whether the victim was able, much less did, consent.”

One of the most damning pieces of evidence presented in court was a written record of Mr. Jeffs’s instructions in August 2005 not to take the girl to a hospital even though she had been struggling in labor for three days at a clinic on the ranch.

“I knew the girl, being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there,” Mr. Jeffs was quoted as saying.

Some of the most revealing testimony came from another witness for the prosecution, Rebecca Musser, a former member of the church who had been married to Rulon T. Jeffs, the sect’s founder and the father of Warren Jeffs. She left the church in 2002 after the elder Mr. Jeffs died.

Ms. Musser testified that Mr. Jeffs had controlled every aspect of the women’s lives, including how they dressed and what they ate. He also controlled whom they married and when.

“Age was not a factor,” she said. “It was when the prophet deemed she was worthy.”

Mr. Stevens mounted a technical defense, arguing that the state could not prove the crime had taken place in Texas since the evidence it had was purely circumstantial. He did not present any witnesses.

“It’s dangerous when we start trying to convict people based on documents and we are not sure where those documents came from,” he said. -James McKinley Jr., New York Times, Nov. 5, 2009

and from the The Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 5, 2009 -Brooke Adams…

Eldorado, Texas » A Schleicher County jury took about two hours to find a polygamous sect member guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 2004.

Raymond Merril Jessop, 38, stood as 51st District Judge Barbara Walther read the verdict reached by the seven men and five women who heard the case. He was immediately handcuffed and escorted across a lawn by at least four law officers to the Schleicher County Jail to await sentencing on Monday.

Jessop did not react as the verdict was read. As he left the courtroom he gave a slight smile and nodded his head at six FLDS members seated in the audience.

None of the attorneys would comment until a sentencing phase concludes Monday.

Willie Jessop, spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also declined comment.

The jury will decide on a sentence after hearing additional witness testimony on Monday. Jessop’s attorneys will likely push for probation, something they asked jurors about during the selection process.

Jessop’s attorneys will likely push for probation, something they asked jurors about during the selection process.

The second-degree felony crime is punishable by two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

As the jury returned to the courtroom for the verdict, one of the original 12 jurors — a woman whose husband served as foreman of the grand jury that indicted Jessop — wasn’t among the group. An alternate juror had been substituted in the missing woman’s place. Court Clerk Peggy Williams
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would not comment as to why the juror had been replaced.

The grand jury indicted Jessop last summer based on evidence gathered during an April 2008 investigation at the Yearning For Zion Ranch, located about three miles from the courthouse. The ranch is home to FLDS members.

The state’s investigation was triggered by a call now acknowledged as a hoax but Walther ruled in September that evidence was taken legally from the ranch.

The jurors, selected from a pool of 300 county residents, heard a week’s worth of testimony.

The state used birth records, a marriage certificate and FLDS church records to show Jessop, already married, took the girl as a spiritual wife in 2004 when she was 15.

She conceived a child several months later and gave birth to a daughter in August 2005. DNA experts testified there was virtually no doubt that Jessop is the child’s father.

Prosecutor Eric Nichols told jurors Thursday in his closing argument that the best evidence that Jessop was guilty of sexual assault is that child, whose face was projected on a screen during his remarks.

The girl, now four, is the “snow on the ground, the pools of water on the ground, that represents the terrible crime of sexual assault,” said Nichols, who used a storm metaphor to validate the state’s reliance on circumstantial evidence.

Nichols pointed at Jessop repeatedly as he tried to seal jurors’ opinions, reminding them of the DNA tests that had so many 9s he couldn’t keep track of them all. There also was corroborating evidence that confirmed the test results, he said.

Earlier Thursday, jurors heard testimony from Texas Ranger Nick Hanna about dictations made by FLDS leader Warren S. Jeffs’ that discussed Jessop’s marriage to the victim, now 21; three-day labor in August 2005; the name bestowed on the baby; and Jessop’s assignments at the ranch.

Nichols said the state did not have to prove an exact date for the sexual assault under Texas law, only that the crime occurred before Jessop was indicted in July 2008 and before a statute of limitations expired.

“Common sense, common experience” provided an estimate that it occurred on or about Nov. 19, 2004, he said.

“Children are our most precious resource and we would never impose on a child the responsibility associated with consenting to being placed in a spiritual marriage . . . much less consenting to an act of sexual violence,” he said.

The defense objected to much of the state’s evidence on constitutional grounds and tried to raise doubt with the jury about the DNA test linking Jessop to the victim’s child.

Defense attorneys Mark Stevens and Brandon T. Hudson told jurors the state did not prove the “most obvious” element of the charge: that Jessop was in Schleicher County, let alone at the ranch, at the time the crime was alleged to have occurred.

Stevens called the trial a “paper case” and said there was no evidence that Jessop ever saw, contributed to or commented on documents, such as the dictations, the state seized from a locked vault in a Temple Annex at the ranch.

“It’s dangerous when we start trying to convict people on documents and we’re not sure where the documents came from,” Stevens said.

“Can you guess a man into a guilty verdict?” he asked, then added that despite the state’s huge mass of documents, “it is not proof of a crime.”

Hudson told jurors the state “didn’t bring you what you need.”

“There is not one piece of evidence in that entire box, on all those computers, in that DNA [that tells you] where Raymond was” in November 2004, he said.

But Nichols, who gave the final statement to the jury, said the state’s allegations weren’t a paper case at all but one “based in flesh and blood” — that of the child and her mother.

“Crimes that are committed behind locked metal gates and fences and walls are just the same kind of crimes that occur out on the street corner,” Nichols said.

The important thing is that law officers are able to get whatever evidence they can to bring to jurors, he said, to address serious crime.

Jessop was one of 12 men indicted by the grand jury last summer. Walther has scheduled their trials one after another over the next year. Allen E. Keate is scheduled to stand trial beginning Dec. 7 on the same charge Jessop faced — sexual assault of a child.

A man who stopped a reporter in the parking lot of the county complex to ask if the jury had reached a verdict responded with just one word when told the outcome.

“Good,” he said.

and from Michelle Roberts at the Associated Press, Nov. 5, 2009

ELDORADO, Texas — The first polygamist sect member to face criminal trial following last year’s raid at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in West Texas was convicted Thursday of sexually assaulting an underage girl with whom he had a so-called “spiritual marriage.”

Raymond Jessop, 38, didn’t visibly react when the verdict was read after just more than two hours of jury deliberations. Free on bond during trial, he was immediately handcuffed and led to jail. Jurors were expected to return to court Monday to begin deciding his sentence on the child sexual assault conviction. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Lawyers in the case declined to comment on the verdict Thursday.

Jessop allegedly has nine wives. He also faces a bigamy charge, but that case is to be tried later. The girl in the assault case, now 21, was previously in a spiritual marriage with Jessop’s brother before being “reassigned” to Jessop when she was 15, according to documents seized at the ranch. She became pregnant at age 16.

During closing arguments, Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols stood before photos of the young mother and toddler in prairie dresses.

“There is a sound foundation based not just in documents — based in DNA evidence for which the documents serve as corroboration … that Raymond Merril Jessop behind those gates, behind that guard house, behind those walls, sexually assaulted” the then-teen, he said.

Forensic experts who testified during the trial, which began with the largest jury pool in the small county’s history on Oct. 26, said there was a nearly 100 percent probability Jessop was the father of the woman’s daughter, who is now 4.

Jessop’s attorneys had argued that no witness placed Jessop in Schleicher County at the time of the alleged assault in November 2004. They said prosecutors instead relied on only small snippets of documents to place Jessop and the teen at the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at the time. Many of the documents were seized from enormous cement vaults inside the temple and temple annex at the ranch.

“It’s dangerous when we start trying to convict people based on documents and we’re not sure where the documents came from,” said Stevens, noting there was no evidence Jessop ever had seen the documents prosecutors used to place him at the ranch in 2004 and 2005.

But the defense offered no witnesses at trial and provided no evidence Jessop was elsewhere.

Nichols used a photo album, family records and dictations by jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs to establish a time line that put Jessop and the teen at the ranch when she became pregnant. The records covered parts of 2004 and 2005, but not specifically the time of the alleged assault.

The woman was on the prosecution’s witness list, but did not testify.

Generally, under Texas law, no one under 17 can consent to sex with adult.

“Any act of sexual assault is a horrendous crime, but an act of a sexual assault of a child is of such an extreme nature we don’t even consider whether the victim was able — much less did — consent,” Nichols said.

Documents given to the jury were heavily redacted to minimize any references to plural marriages. The jury was told Jessop was legally married to another woman before entering the spiritual marriage, but only as proof Jessop could not have been legally married to the teen.

In all, 12 FLDS men have been indicted on charges ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault since authorities raided the ranch last year. The 439 children taken from the property and placed in foster care following the raid all have been returned to their parents or other relatives.

Jeffs, revered by the FLDS as the group’s prophet, was convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. He awaits trial in Arizona on charges related to underage marriages there. He’ll then face separate sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago and does not recognize the FLDS.

Historically based around the Arizona-Utah state line, the FLDS bought a ranch about 150 miles northwest of San Antonio, in Eldorado, six years ago, and began building massive log homes and a towering temple.

The raid of the insular group made national headlines as women in prairie dresses and braids were moved off the ranch, and child welfare officials took custody of their children in one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history.

IMHO
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Posted by David Pike on November 7, 2009.
Filed under: News