Jury selection begins in FLDS member trial
 
By Matthew Waller
San Angelo Standard-Times
 
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Several residents of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, easily identifiable by their trademark clothing and appearance, were among the 153 Schleicher County residents who showed up for jury duty at 9 a.m. Monday in Eldorado.

Prospective jurors waited patiently in a chilly drizzle driven by a biting wind to get into the Memorial Building, and once inside again waited for two hours while lawyers and the defendant rotated in and out of Judge Barbara Walther’s chambers.

Defendant Raymond Merril Jessop, 38, is accused of child sexual assault in the case, the first criminal trial to come out of the historic raid by the state against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints.

Jessop and 11 other men were indicted by a Schleicher County grand jury late last year, with many of the allegations springing from records and other evidence seized during the April 2008 raid at the ranch.

Walther has presided over the FLDS cases since the beginning, having overseen the mass custody hearings after 439 children were removed from the ranch and, earlier this year, hearing pre-trial motions in the Jessop case.

"I apologize for getting a late start," Walther told the jury pool Monday morning. "It’s kind of like getting children ready for school." Sometimes, she said, it happens quickly, and sometimes it takes longer than expected.

Walther thanked the jurors for showing and then ticked off possible exemptions to jury duty, such as being older than 70. She invited potential jurors to come to the bench to discuss exemptions. As the morning progressed, she released about 17 more members of the jury pool.

At noon, she announced "The good news: Lunch." She added," The bad news: You’re going to have to come back at 1:30."

She cautioned the jury pool against discussing anything to do with the case with the media or their spouses. She left potential jurors with a warning: "If you don’t come back after lunch, the sheriff will go find you and bring you back."

Outside the building, Department of Public Safety officers in bright yellow rain gear stood watch.

Randy Mankin, owner and editor of the weekly Eldorado Success newspaper, said as he walked out of the Memorial Building that he had been rejected from jury duty because of his news media connections.

There are few people in the county untouched by the trial. Mankin said his son had also been called for jury selection but was excused because he is attending college at Angelo State University, and his mother was also called but excused because she is elderly.

A biting cold wind rustled leaves on the trees surrounding the building, which was marked off with yellow security tape. Jury selection — for which 300 names were originally chosen from the pool of registered Schleicher County voters — was moved from the courthouse to the Memorial Building, which provided a larger venue. Nearly half of the pool was excused or exempted before Monday morning.

"This is nothing," said Mankin, looking around the Eldorado streetscape. "When the raid was going on, there were 18 satellite trucks out here."

Jury selection is expected to continue at least to the end of today and possibly for part of Tuesday.
 
gosanangelo.com
Originally published October 26, 2009
 
Back