Jeffs' attorney to interview witness
 
By JIM SECKLER
Mohave Daily News
 
KINGMAN - The attorney for the convicted prophet of a Colorado City polygamist church will interview a key witness in his Arizona case Monday.

Superior Court Judge Steven Conn ruled in October to allow Warren Steed Jeffs' defense attorneys to interview Flora Jessop in Jeffs' two Mohave County cases. Jessop was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Colorado City who escaped the polygamist community in 1986. She is now executive director of the Child Protection Project in Phoenix.

Jeffs, 52, is charged with four counts of sexual conduct with a minor in two 2007 cases involving two underage girls. The crimes allegedly took place in the summers of 2002 and 2003. Jeffs also is charged with felony sexual assault of a child under 17 and aggravated sexual assault in Schleicher County, Texas.

Jeffs' attorney, Mike Piccarreta, will interview Jessop Monday at the Arizona Attorney General's Office in Phoenix. Jessop also must bring any recordings of phone calls she made with Arizona or Texas law enforcement or the Texas Child Protection Services from March 22 to April 16. She also must provide any phone tapes she made with Rozita Swinton, the Colorado woman whose phone call initiated a raid at the FLDS compound in Texas.

Three Texas law enforcement officers will be interviewed by Jeffs' attorneys. The officers were involved in the April raid at the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas. The defense attorney had concerns they were tainted by evidence that was allegedly seized illegally during the raid. Piccarreta is trying to suppress the Texas evidence claiming that the call that triggered the Texas raid was a hoax and officers used that hoax to illegally obtain a warrant to search the compound.

Jeffs 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.
 
MohaveDailyNews.com
Originally published Wednesday, November 19, 2008
 
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