A Washington County, Utah state court jury today convicted Warren Jeffs, former head of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14 year old girl who was pressured by Jeffs to enter into a marriage with her 19-year old cousin. The New York Times reports that "the verdict ... was a vindication of the prosecution’s argument — which some experts had thought might be hard to accept — that orchestrating a marriage of a young girl under duress made Mr. Jeffs culpable even though he was not present when the rape occurred." Prosecutors argued that Jeffs knew that the marriage would lead to non-consensual sexual relationships.
The Los Angeles Times last week filled out the details: "Jeffs pressured the girl into marriage, then refused to free her when she complained that her husband was touching her in ways she did not like." Jeffs' attorney, Walter F. Bugden Jr., had argued: "The state can say Warren Steed Jeffs is on trial, but it's his . . . church, his religious beliefs that is on trial here, dressed up as a crime called rape." He argued that the state should have charged Jeffs only with officiating at an unlawful marriage.
