A Quick Verdict

The jury has returned its verdicts in the Warren Jeffs case in which he was accused of being an accomplice to rape for instigating a monogamous FLDS marriage of a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old man, and the media and blogs are awash in coverage:

• The Salt Lake Tribune: "Jeffs guilty on both counts"
• The Deseret News: "Jury finds Jeffs guilty"
• Messenger and Advocate: "I am very, very surprised ...'
• Freespace: "God's favorite serial rapist ..."
• Freespace, remembering his libertarian values: ... a lot of troubling questions ..."

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the media and, over the next months or years, in the appeals courts. Some interesting historical background is available at the Wikipedia summaries of the Short Creek raid, Arizona's attempt to shut down Mormon fundamentalist polygamists in 1953, in which public opinion turned against the state; and the Tom Green case from Utah in 2001, in which it did not.

Of course, those were polygamy cases. Jeffs was not charged with bigamy or polygamy (to purists, "plural marriage" or even "polygyny"), just another ironic twist in this strange case which also featured the replacement of one juror Tuesday morning for reasons not disclosed [update: now disclosed here]; a direction from the judge to the jury to start their deliberations afresh given the substitution of the alternate juror; then a quick guilty verdict later in the day. Oh, and the husband/rapist was not charged at all ... yet. Of course, criminal justice sometimes plays out in strange ways. Remember that Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion.

Comments

[Guy Murray]

Hey Dave,

Thanks for the link. The Tribune now has an article explaining the juror's dismissal. While I don't practice criminal law, this sure sounds like fertile ground for an appeal issue. The juror apparently mislead the court and counsel in some of her answers during voir dire and didn't disclose her own prior sexual abuse. She used that experience during jury deliberations to convince some hold outs to convict.

Also, your links above to Freespace don't seem to be working. I'd like to read them, based on your lead line. They sound interesting

[Dave]

Thanks for the update link, Guy -- I spliced it into my post and fixed the link problem. The prosecutor must be tearing his hair out over that juror.

[Seth R.]

Not much to say other than I'm glad he'll be cooling his heels in prison for a while.

I've thought that the bigamy laws were more or less unenforceable for some time now. This is yet another case in point. If there is tax evasion, welfare fraud, or abuse going on, have at them. But the bigamy issue needs to be left out of it. Otherwise these people can use the religion card to garner sympathy they wouldn't ordinarily deserve.

[Nick Literski]

Authorities have just filed charges against the husband for rape of a child. Considering that the Jeffs jury found that the girl would never have had sex if not for Jeffs' religious dominance, it seems that the husband should now point out that he never would have married a 14 year old and had sex with her, if Jeffs hadn't used his religious authority to direct it.

How much would you like to bet, however, that such consistent logic won't prevail when the husband goes to trial?