Jeffs' attorney files motion to suppress Texas case evidence
 
By JIM SECKLER
Mohave Daily News
 
KINGMAN - An attorney for polygamist sect leader Warren Steed Jeffs filed a motion Wednesday in Mohave County Superior Court to suppress evidence obtained in an April search of Jeffs' Texas compound.

Jeffs, 52, is charged in Mohave County with two counts of sexual conduct with a minor involving an underage girl between May 1 and June 30, 2002 and between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, 2002. The second case also charges him with two counts of sexual conduct with a minor involving another underage girl on Aug. 31, 2003 and in September 2003.

Conn previously dismissed four counts of incest filed against the defendant. Jeffs, the convicted prophet of the Colorado City-based sect, was convicted in 2007 in St. George, Utah on two counts of rape as an accomplice and was sentenced in November to 10 years in a Utah prison. He also faces on charges in Texas.

The attorney, Mike Piccarreta, filed a motion to suppress evidence found in April at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ compound in Eldorado, Texas. The motion claims that law enforcement officers applied for a warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who they believed was at the compound. Officers even talked to Barlow who was on probation in Arizona and living in Colorado City. During the raid, officers seized 468 children and invaded and seized sacred religious records, Piccarreta said.

When applying for a second warrant, officers already knew that Barlow was in Arizona and that they withheld from the judge in Texas that the alleged child in danger had not been located after three days of searching. Piccarreta claims the phone call about the endangered child that triggered the Texas raid was a hoax and officers used the hoax to obtain a warrant to search each house at the compound.

"The number of constitutional errors involved in this search leads one to conclude that Texas law enforcement simply did not care whether it violated the Constitution or the impact of illicit behavior on other people," the motion states.

Mohave County investigator Gary Engels, Arizona Assistant Attorney General Tim Linnins and Arizona law enforcement officers also spent time in Texas with illegally seized items and documents, the motion also states.

Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn will rule on the motion. The judge has not yet set another hearing to argue this or other motions and possibley set a trial date.
 
MohaveDailyNews.com
Originally published Thursday, September 18, 2008
 
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