Judge declines to send Jeffs' case to grand jury
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) -- A judge has denied a request to have Arizona's case against polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs sent back to a grand jury.
Jeffs' attorney Michael Piccaretta had argued that Jeffs was denied a fair and unbiased grand jury, and that the prosecution presented false or misleading evidence to the grand jury.
Mohave County Judge Steven Conn ruled against Jeffs on Monday.
Jeffs awaits trial in Arizona on four counts of being an accomplice to sexual conduct with a minor. Those charges stem from the marriages of two teenage girls and their adult male relatives.
Piccaretta has also said that evidence from the Texas raid should be barred from the Arizona cases on the grounds that the raid was based on a call that Texas authorities should have known was a hoax.
"They proceeded to search the premises nevertheless," Piccarreta told The Associated Press in an interview Friday after a hearing before Judge Steven Conn of Mohave County Superior Court.
Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith responded Monday by saying he believes that Texas authorities acted in good faith in their April raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound.
Their actions were "appropriate and constitutional," Smith said. "If they get information and it later turns out to be false, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the (search) warrant."
Factors that need to be considered is whether the information was regarded as reliable, whether there were indications that more investigation was needed and whether circumstances demanded action on an emergency basis, the prosecutor said.
Texas authorities were looking for evidence of underage girls forced into marriages and sex.
The FLDS believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, but its plural marriages were generally only church-sanctioned, not legal. The church is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
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