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An Arizona judge has canceled a two-day hearing in the state’s case against polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs after granting a defense motion barring use of any evidence found at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ Texas ranch in 2008.
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A new president has been called to lead a controversial polygamous sect, replacing jailed leader Warren S. Jeffs in that post.

Wendell Nielsen, 69, is now president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and of the corporate entity that handles the faith’s business dealings, according to a document filed with the state of Utah.
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Michael Emack, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, pleaded no contest to the accusation of sexual assault of a child Friday, was found guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Emack is the third of 10 FLDS members indicted, with trials scheduled to go on through December.
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Winston Blackmore, the leader of a polygamous community in southeastern British Columbia who has admitted to having multiple wives, is suing the provincial government for violating his rights when he was charged last year.

The charges were thrown out last fall after the men’s lawyers successfully argued in court that the decision of a previous special prosecutor not to lay charges was final.
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Winston Blackmore, Canada’s best known polygamist, foresees a year of doom for those that deliberately break up families or interfere with a person’s freedom.

The cult leader was charged with polygamy earlier this year, but the court quashed the charges on procedural grounds, deciding that the government had unfairly gone “prosecutor shopping” to find someone to prosecute Mr. Blackmore after two independent prosecutors had advised against it.
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A jury in Texas has sentenced polygamist Allan Eugene Keate to 33 years in prison.

The FLDS sect member was convicted earlier this week for his alleged so-called “spiritual marriage” to a 15-year-old girl who gave birth at age 16.
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A 57-year-old member of a polygamist group raided by Texas authorities last year has been convicted of sexual assault of a child.

He faces up to life in prison for his alleged so-called “spiritual marriage” to a 15-year-old girl who gave birth at age 16.
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After two hearings lasting 12 hours Monday, the stage is set for the trial of Allan Eugene Keate, beginning today in the Memorial Building in Eldorado.

Keate, a member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sect, is alleged to have taken an underage girl as a “spiritual” wife.
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The FLDS church and heirs of a former prophet want a Utah judge to remove a fiduciary who oversees a polygamous community’s property trust, alleging the trustee’s actions have left the trust in “decidedly worse” shape than when he took over its management.

They ask the judge to appoint a new fiduciary who does not have “an obvious conflict of interest” — something she has refused to do in the past.
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Allen Keate — a member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sect — will be tried Dec. 7 on a charge of sexual abuse of a child, a second-degree felony that carries a punishment of two to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

An April 2008 raid of the sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado resulted in the removal of more than 400 children and criminal charges against 12 FLDS men.

Last week a jury convicted FLDS member Raymond Jessop, sentencing him to 10 years in prison.
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A man from a polygamist group in West Texas has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexual assault of a child.

Raymond Jessop was sentenced Tuesday by the same jury that convicted him last week.

The 38-year-old was the first member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to go on trial since authorities raided their ranch in Eldorado last year.
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Raymond M. Jessop, 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.

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 16. [video]
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Women in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints polygamist sect were taught that their fathers or husbands and the sect’s prophet had the right to direct every aspect of their lives, a former member testified Wednesday in the child sexual abuse trial of a current sect member.

Prosecutors asked Musser to talk about her experience in the FLDS and how church records are kept, as they are relying heavily on records and dictations by jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs that were seized from the ranch.
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Cult leader Warren Jeffs’ attorney, Walter Bugden Jr., said the state could have charged Jeffs with performing an illegal marriage, but instead decided to charge an unpopular religious figure with a serious crime that didn’t fit the facts of the case.

Note that Jeffs — notorious for his ruthlessness — told the girl in question she would lose her salvation if she did not obey.
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Defense attorney Mark Stevens argued that much of the content of the documents, mostly marriage records or dictations made by Warren S. Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, are extraneous, prejudicial and not relevant to the crime charged to Jessop because they refer to polygamy.
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A birthing center on the bottom floor of a log cabin-style building at a polygamist group’s West Texas ranch was set up like a medical office with one distict difference: A portrait of jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs hung over the delivery bed.

The photo was introduced into evidence by prosecutors in the trial of FLDS sect member Raymond Jessop.
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The child sexual assault trial of a polygamist sect member came to a screeching halt just before 3 p.m. today because a jurist’s child may have swine flu.

Raymond Merrill Jessop is the first of 12 men from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to face a criminal trial in Texas. The assault charge stems from his alleged marriage to a girl who was 16 when she became pregnant.
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Attorneys moved closer to seating a jury in the first criminal case resulting from the state’s 2008 raid on a polygamist sect’s ranch after narrowing a jury pool to 34 on Tuesday.

Raymond Jessop is the first of 12 FLDS men to be tried on a variety of sexual assault and bigamy charges as a result of the April, 2008 raid on the cult’s Yearning for Zion Ranch.
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The first of a dozen polygamist sect members charged with abuse of women stands trial Monday, 18 months after agents raided the group’s remote ranch and carted off more than 400 children in the largest child-custody case in American history.

Raymond Jessop, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sexual assault of a child, a charge stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He will be tried later on a separate count of bigamy related to a second alleged underage bride.
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Canada will not appeal a court ruling tossing out criminal charges against two men in polygamous religious sects, authorities in British Columbia said Thursday.

Provincial Attorney General Michael de Jong said that westernmost British Columbia will instead ask its provincial Supreme Court whether Canada’s law against polygamy is constitutional.
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A polygamous sect is asking the Utah Supreme Court to overturn a state court decision that stripped the religious purposes from its communal land trust.

In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints say making the United Effort Plan Trust secular was a violation of the faith’s constitutionally protected religious rights.
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SAN ANGELO, Texas — A Texas judge ruled Friday that prosecutors could use thousands of documents seized during a weeklong raid of a polygamist sect’s West Texas ranch in upcoming criminal trials even though search warrants were prompted by faked reports of abuse, AP reports.

Attorneys for FLDS sect men charged after the April 2008 raid had sought to have the documents — including family photos, records of multiple marriages and journal entries by jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs — kept out of their trials because they were obtained using search warrants that relied on false reports to a domestic abuse hotline.

The defendants argued law enforcement officials were looking for an excuse to raid the Yearning For Zion Ranch and did little to check the reports before rummaging through the ranch’s homes and other buildings.

Prosecutors disputed that claim, saying law enforcement officials believed the reports were real at the time of the search.
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A polygamist sect member set to go on trial for bigamy and sexual abuse of a child next month deliberately skirted anti-money laundering laws and used a wife he once abandoned to help front a company in Arizona, prosecutors allege in a court filing.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office isn’t seeking additional charges against Raymond Jessop, 38, but wants to use the allegations to bolster Jessop’s punishment if he is convicted.
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The Utah Attorney General’s Office has declined to prosecute a case of polygamy alone, citing resource issues of building prisons for tens of thousands of polygamists and creating an enormous burden on the welfare system to care for their wives and children.

Instead, prosecutors have followed Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s advice in going after crimes within polygamy — including child-bride marriages, abuse, and fraud.
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Criminal polygamy charges against B.C., Canada religious leaders Winston Blackmore and Jim Oler were thrown out last Thursday — which, Canada’s National Post writes, means they can continue to practise what they preach: Accept multiple wives, including teenage girls.

But McGill University law professor Angela Campbell isn’t too worried. While she does not endorse polygamy, her research into the religious groups suggests Bountiful is neither a community of horrors nor a utopia.
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1. Polygamy... Utah's Open Little Secret
2. Cult stories enough to make you want to cry
3. Jane Doe in Warren Jeffs case no longer seeks anonymity, shows photo
4. Thou shalt obey
5. Escape from polygamy: Ex-plural wife alleges rampant abuse in FLDS unions
6. 1984 Lafferty case still haunts
7. Warren Jeffs: Fugitive Mormon leader's reign of fear ended by traffic violation
8. Winston Blackmore: Polygamist group's leader expects to be charged soon
9. At Warren Jeff trial, an inside look at his church
10. Meeting sheds light on Colorado City polygamist sect

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