SALT LAKE CITY — Polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs’ attorneys want a judge to throw out his conviction, arguing 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 argued.
They asked 5th District Judge James Shumate to dismiss the jury’s Sept. 25 decision to convict Jeffs of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. 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.
Jeffs did not decide Wall, then 14, should marry or pick her spouse. Wall and other witnesses said those decisions were made by Fred Jessop, her stepfather, and then-prophet Rulon Jeffs.
When she objected to the marriage, Warren Jeffs “did nothing more than to encourage Ms. Wall to remain faithful to FLDS theology about placement marriages,” the same advice her family gave, the court document states.
The eight-word Old Testament phrase Jeffs recited during the ceremony — “Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the Earth” — has been used for centuries and cannot be interpreted as a command to submit to unwanted sex, they argue. “Imagine the mischief if such symbolic or ceremonial terms could give rise to criminal liability,” the document states.
By way of example, it lists Old Testament phrases that urge abandonment of uncircumcised boys, murder of witches and homosexuals, and stoning someone who curses.
Wall testified family pressure and FLDS teachings compelled her to accept the marriage and, three weeks later, to submit sexually to her husband. Wall said she sobbed as she was raped; Steed testified she initiated sex.
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