Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who heads a breakaway Mormon sect, was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for sexually assaulting two underage girls he claimed as “spiritual” brides.
The Texas jury of 10 women and two men deliberated for less than an hour before giving him a 99-year, or life, sentence on one charge and 20 years on a second — the maximum for both.
The case against Jeffs and others stems from a raid on his sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch in rural Texas in April 2008. Authorities took custody of 400 children, but returned them to their families after an investigation and DNA tests.
“Justice has arrived for Warren Steed Jeffs,” said Assistant Texas Attorney General Eric Nichols, who prosecuted the case. “We expect that he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Prosecutors said Jeffs, 55, “played a sick game of child molestation under the guise of religious ceremony.”
He will serve his prison terms consecutively and is not eligible for parole until 2070. Jeffs was convicted last week of aggravated sexual assault on a child and sexual assault on a child in connection with two girls he “married” when they were 12 and 14 years old.
He fathered a child with the older girl and was heard on audio recordings telling groups of teenage girls they would be “rejected by God” if they refused his sexual advances.
A crowd heckled Jeffs as he was put into a police car after the sentencing.
“Do you still think you’re the prophet?” one woman yelled.
Jeffs abused his position as leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints “to victimize children, to break up families and to satisfy his own personal appetites and desires,” Assistant Texas Attorney General Eric Nichols told the jury.
Jeffs, who represented himself at trial, had argued in loud outbursts that the court was trampling on his religious rights by hearing the case.
His sect, which experts estimate has 10,000 followers in North -America, has been condemned by the mainstream Mormon Church and is accused of promoting marriages between older men and girls.
“Mr Jeffs had his big house, where he chose to warehouse hundreds of girls and women for his sexual gratification,” Nichols said in closing arguments. “The state of Texas has a big house too and that is where Warren Jeffs should spend the rest of his days.”
William Jessop, who has acted as the unofficial spokesman for the group’s Texas ranch in the past, said the trial showed the government should have acted sooner to rescue women and children who were being abused by Jeffs.
“There was evidence that was seized way back in 2006 and 2007 of this abuse,” he said, referring to some recordings. “That’s a lot of years and all we can do is thank God that he was stopped.”
Jeffs, who retained lawyers during the sentencing phase, told them to refrain from making closing arguments on his behalf, but he made a written request for probation.
His lawyers said they would not be handling his appeal, but that there were legitimate grounds for one.
Some legal experts have argued that, because the raid on the compound was triggered by a false report of abuse, the evidence gathered there could be disallowed.
However, Judge Barbara Walther, who has presided over the case in her San Angelo, Texas, courtroom since the raid, allowed evidence that prosecutors said proved Jeffs abused his position to have sex with girls as young as 12.
A polygamist advocacy coalition in Utah and Arizona said the life sentence for Jeffs was justified.
“I feel like justice has been done,” said Anne Wilde, a spokeswoman for Principle Voices. “I don’t feel like he should be out in society, even among his own group.”
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who had long pursued Jeffs, said the sentence was appropriate.
“I’m pleased that they’ve sent the message that you can run, but you can’t hide,” he said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the