A polygamous sect man convicted of sexual assault isn’t giving up his fight against the search warrant that led to a massive raid on the sect’s remote Texas ranch.
Attorneys for Michael Emack, 60, filed a motion for rehearing in the Texas Third Court of Appeals this week, according to court records.
Last year, Emack pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting an underage girl he took as a plural wife. But he appealed his conviction, arguing not that he was innocent, but that a 2008 raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado was illegal because it was sparked by a hoax phone call from a Colorado woman pretending to be an abused 16-year-old wife.
In that raid, authorities collected evidence against him and 11 other members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including sect leader Warren Jeffs.
Last August a Texas Appeals Court upheld Emack’s conviction, saying that the 2008 searches of the Yearning for Zion Ranch were legally justified.