Lawyer in FLDS trial says state's notice misleading
 
By Michael Kelly
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Barbs already are flying with the start of Raymond Merril Jessop’s criminal trial coming up in just more than three weeks.

On Tuesday, state prosecutors in the case against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints member filed four pages of allegations they intend to use in the punishment phase of the trial, should Jessop be found guilty of the child sexual abuse charges he will face in the trial, which begins Oct. 26 in Eldorado.

Jessop, 37, is one of 10 sect members to face criminal charges as an outcome of the state’s raid on the YFZ Ranch in April 2008 and the first of them scheduled to go to trial.

A pre-trial hearing is scheduled at 10 a.m. today in San Angelo.

Jessop’s attorney, Mark Stevens of San Antonio, on Thursday filed a 23-page response to the state’s notice of intent, which included allegations that Jessop was involved in a number of illegal marriages in Utah and Schleicher County, violated banking regulations in connection with an account related to the YFZ Ranch and aided sect leader Warren Jeffs while he was a fugitive in 2005 and 2006.

Stevens’ response to the state’s notice, styled Defendant’s Objections to Evidence, states, "The state cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt with competent and admissible evidence that Mr. Jessop perpetrated any of these transactions."

Stevens argues that the state’s allegations are "unfairly prejudicial, confusing and misleading, and therefore inadmissible."

Jessop was indicted on bigamy and sexual assault charges in July 2008, but he is being tried on Oct. 26 only on the sexual assault counts, and Stevens in his response argues that allegations involving multiple marriages, harboring a fugitive and bank fraud are unproven and irrelevant for this trial.

Stevens and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment before the trial.

The criminal trials of the 10 men are the remaining legal actions after the massive raid and child removal action at the sect compound last year in Schleicher County. The raid triggered a mass of custody hearings, which took place in San Angelo and focused world attention on the city for weeks.

The custody actions are finished and the children returned to their families, but evidence gathered at the ranch was used to pursue prosecution of men living on the ranch who are accused of sexual assault in connection with allegations that they married underage girls.
 
gosanangelo.com
Originally published October 1, 2009
 
Back