Trial date for Jeffs could be set soon
 
By JIM SECKLER
Mohave Daily News
 
KINGMAN — A trial date may finally be set soon in the two-year-old case against Warren Jeffs, the jailed former leader of a polygamist church in Colorado City, Ariz.

Jeffs’ attorneys, Michael Piccarreta of Tucson and Richard Wright of Las Vegas, have asked Superior Court Judge Steven Conn to set a date toward the end of March for an omnibus hearing, which usually sets trial dates. Conn scheduled that hearing for March 26.

Jeffs, 54, is charged with four counts of sexual conduct with a minor in two 2007 cases. He is charged with being an accomplice of two men who had sex with two underage girls, which allegedly took place in 2002 and 2003 in the polygamist communities of Colorado City and Hildale, Utah.

Jeffs, the former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been sitting in a Mohave County jail since February 2008 awaiting a resolution to his Arizona charges while his attorneys filed numerous motions.

The latest motion is a request to officially interview Lamont Barlow, the current husband of one of the two victims in the Arizona case. Piccarreta argues that Barlow allegedly told another woman that his wife gave false testimony dealing with falsified medical records against Jeffs in his Utah case. She was also the victim in the Utah case. Jeffs is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted in Utah in 2007 of two counts of rape as an accomplice.

Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith argued that Barlow has already been interviewed by the defense attorneys and answered all their questions. Smith calls the motion for deposition a non-issue because the victim did not testify about medical records at Jeffs’ Utah trial.

A telephonic hearing this week, attorneys are expected to argue a motion to depose Barlow, of Salt Lake City, possibly on March 16.

Jeffs also is charged with felony sexual assault of a child under 17 and aggravated sexual assault in Schleicher County, Texas, after a raid by Texas law enforcement officers at the church-owned Yearning For Zion Ranch compound in Eldorado, Texas, in April 2008.
 
MohaveDailyNews.com
Originally published Tuesday, March 2, 2010
 
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