Brian David Mitchell

SALT LAKE CITY -- Attorneys for a former street preacher sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and raping Elizabeth Smart are asking for an extra 30 days to decide whether to appeal.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Elizabeth Smart waited more than eight years for the word she heard Friday.

SALT LAKE CITY — A federal jury found a rambling street preacher guilty Friday of the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart in a case that has tugged at hearts around the nation ever since the Utah teenager was snatched from her bedroom and resurfaced nine months later.

Brian David Mitchell could face up to life in prison when he is sentenced on May 25.

Elizabeth Smart gave a slight smile as she heard the guilty verdicts on charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines for the purposes of illegal sex.

Smart then turned to her mother and both smiled. Elizabeth Smart later hugged prosecutors in the Salt Lake City courtroom.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Defense attorneys for a former street preacher charged in the abduction of Elizabeth Smart wrapped up their case Thursday after seven days of testimony from about two dozen witnesses.

The final witness, clinical psychologist Dr. Richart DeMier, told jurors an assessment done four decades ago as part of a Juvenile Court referral found defendant Brian David Mitchell was pre- psychotic at age 16.

By the 1990s, he was married with a job and was a leader at his LDS Church when something triggered a change, the psychologist said.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart stormed from a Utah courtroom Wednesday as a psychiatrist testified that her alleged attacker had been motivated by a desire to have children and create a new race in an imaginary Zion.

Forensic psychiatrist Paul Whitehead took the witness stand under subpoena during the federal trial of former street preacher Brian David Mitchell on kidnapping and other charges.

Whitehead said he gleaned this information from the journals of Wanda Eileen Barzee, Mitchell's estranged wife.

Whitehead said Smart had been chastised by Mitchell and Barzee for not wanting to have children.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Attorneys for the man accused of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart began building their case Tuesday, painting a picture of a deeply religious man who became increasingly inflexible and lost in his own beliefs.