The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new trial of a polygamist leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, who was convicted of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her first cousin.
Warren Jeffs, 54, whose word was considered God’s will to thousands of followers, was sentenced in November 2007 to a term of 10 years to life in prison.
The high court ruled, however, that a new trial was needed because the lower court judge gave faulty instructions to the jury. The failed to tell jurors that they could not render a guilty verdict unless they determined that Jeffs knew unwanted sex would occur.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he was very disappointed with the court decision.
“One of our biggest concerns obviously is how do we protect young girls, particularly within closed societies, polygamist sects, from being forced by their leaders to marry older men and have sex with them,” Shurtleff said at a news conference.
The alleged victim in the case, Elissa Wall, now in her 20s, called the verdict’s reversal “emotionally devastating.”
“I am still in shock, understanding that there is a huge possibility that we could do this all over again and more than anything that Warren Jeffs is possibly going to walk away. That’s painful,” she told reporters in Salt Lake City.
Jeffs remains in prison for now, though his lawyers are expected to seek his release. They have characterized Jeffs as an “unpopular religious figure” unfairly singled out for prosecution on the basis of unorthodox beliefs and teachings.
He spent 15 months on the run and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list of fugitives before his August 2006 arrest near Las Vegas.
He was convicted in September 2007 on two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice, stemming from his 2001 performance of a marriage between Wall, then 14, and her 19-year-old cousin over her objections at a Nevada motel.
Wall testified that she begged Jeffs not to proceed with the marriage. But Jeffs told her to repent and give herself “mind, body and soul” to her new husband.
Jeffs faces similar charges in Texas, though a separate case against him in Arizona was recently dismissed.
Jeffs is the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist sect with about 10,000 followers in Utah, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia.
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