Warren Jeffs: Prosecutors say judge should rebuff bid to overturn verdicts

Prosecutors filed a motion today asking a St. George judge to deny polygamist leader Warren Jeffs’ bid to overturn his recent rape-as-an-accomplice conviction.

Among other things, Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap tells 5th District Judge James Shumate that Jeffs’ jury had evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to convict the FLDS sect leader.

Jeffs’ attorneys had argued earlier that the judge should throw out Jeffs’ conviction, sayng the case against him was speculative and “purely circumstantial.”

No evidence showed Jeffs was aware of or encouraged nonconsensual sex between Elissa Wall and her former husband, Allen Steed, the attorneys argue in a motion filed Tuesday.

Shumate is set to sentence Jeffs on Tuesday.

Jeffs, 51, conducted Wall’s 2001 marriage to Steed and later counseled her to stay in the union.

In 2001, Jeffs was first counselor in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect is based in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

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