Matthew Waller mwaller@gosanangelo.com / 659-8263
Posted June 22, 2010 at 9:51 p.m.

ELDORADO — Jurors in the trial of Abram Harker Jeffs heard a storm of testimony from Child Protective Services workers and a clinical psychologist Tuesday in the punishment phase of Jeffs’ trial after finding him guilty of sexual assault of a child.

The jury took less than an hour to reach its verdict.

Jeffs, 39 and a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, faces two to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for a second-degree felony.

Or he could face five to 99 years or life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if an enhancement applies that would make the crime a first-degree felony.

The enhancement says that if the alleged victim is prohibited from marrying, purporting to marry or living with under the appearance of being married to the defendant, the crime becomes a first-degree felony.

The state alleges that Jeffs assaulted a girl with whom he was in an FLDS “spiritual” or “celestial” marriage on May 12, 2006, when Jeffs was 34 and already legally married, and when the girl was 15.

Sgt. Les Palmer testified to having found a deleted picture of the victim pregnant in a yellow dress. 51st District Judge Barbara Walther had prohibited the prosecution from showing the picture in the innocence-or-guilt phase of the trial because it might have connoted another abuse situation.

Department of Public Safety officer Jack McCrea testified that Jeffs had once sped over 65 mph with a child in the passenger seat without a seat belt.

Also, a Department of Family Protective Services worker described seeing the victim during a raid two years ago on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, an FLDS community near Eldorado. The raid resulted in the state recovering hundreds of documents while taking more than 400 children from the ranch. The latter decision was reversed by an appellate court, and the children were returned.

“She was visibly pale, very flat emotionally,” said Ruby Gutierrez, the worker. “My heart went out to her.”

Another CPS worker, Kelly Walker, confirmed Gutierrez’s observations.

Willie Jessop, an FLDS spokesman, said anyone undergoing the raid would have appeared tried.

“Who is on their game when they have their children taken from them?” Jessop said.

Gutierrez said the victim was pregnant at the time of the raid, although the child from the assault had already been born.

Guiterrez described the schoolhouse where she conducted interviews with children during the raid as sparse but clean.

Jessop said that he was outraged by the “blatant dishonesty” from CPS workers who said children were free to go after their interviews and that the children were not crying when they went to interviews.

“You could wring their tears from their pillows,” Jessop said.

Another woman, Vickie Copeland, contracted to do counseling work for CPS, said the victim behaved oddly at a counseling session after the raid, not being very responsive to a test, not wearing shoes and openly scratching her crotch once.

Copeland said the test had some high-level wording, which might have confused the then 17-year-old girl.

Much of the afternoon, however, was spent listening to testimony from clinical psychologist Larry Beall, who has testified that sexual assault and forced under-aged marriages are psychologically damaging.

“At the center of the adolescent girl’s belief is that being married to an older priesthood head is the only way she can be exalted to God,” Beall said.

Defense attorney Brandon Hudson had Beall examine a document that Beall was associated with that said not to generalize. Hudson questioned the value of Beall’s experience, having come largely from former FLDS members.

Hudson asked Beall whether his card-holding position in the Latter-day Saints church prejudiced his testimony since the FLDS continues to practice polygamy and the LDS does not.

Beall said it did not.

The jury took less than an hour Tuesday morning, the 10th day of the trial, to convict Jeffs.

Jeffs is the latest in a series of men from the YFZ Ranch to be prosecuted on child sexual assault charges since the state raided the ranch two years ago.

“In this case we don’t have a car wreck or a snowstorm,” lead prosecutor Eric Nichols said in his closing arguments for guilt or innocence, harking back to examples he had used to explain different kinds of evidence to the jury. “In this case we have a child.”

Nichols referred to evidence from two DNA tests and documents seized from the YFZ Ranch raid.

“You don’t have to believe it just because they tell you,” Hudson said.

Hudson has objected and told the jurors they shouldn’t give any weight to the evidence that was gathered in the raid, saying the raid violated his client’s rights because the seizure was based on what law enforcement personnel believe was a hoax phone call from a woman claiming abuse on the ranch.

“We make objections because we think the way the evidence was obtained was wrong,” Hudson said.

Hudson and Stephanie Goodman, another defense attorney, attacked the DNA evidence as questionable because two samples were analyzed rather than one.

Both samples gave the same results, DNA experts testified earlier in the trial.

Hudson said nothing attached his client to many of the church records, noting that the records were kept “secret and sacred” among even the FLDS. He said that dictations from the then-leader were at times the product of dreams and not necessarily reliable, especially in light of cover sheets that said “incomplete” and “unapproved.”

“We pray you’ll use a mixture of the two, man’s law and God’s law, and find our client not guilty,” Goodman said. Her voice quivered throughout her final statements as she had said that Jeffs had become a friend to her.

Nichols, in his second and final closing argument — which the prosecution has because of its burden of proof — said freedom of religion does not give license to do anything.

“They say we should say someone’s religious belief trumps the law,” Nichols said. “The law says there are certain values that you must abide by. ... We are all accountable.”

FLDS spokesman Jessop said he believed that the state has at last publicly made the case a religious matter.

“For the first time, they’ve admitted it’s about religion,” Jessop said.

Jessop also stressed deprivation of rights, in the raid and in the trial, as an issue of prime concern.

“Disregard your First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, and anyone is in danger,” Jessop said. “We need to have judicial notice of what’s happening.”

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Emphasis added by H4K Editor