Salt Lake City, USA - Two ex-members of a polygamist sect, testifying in the Arizona trial of a church member accused of impregnating a 16-year-old girl, described a culture of secret marriages, arranged within hours, that occur only with approval of the faith's prophet.
The testimony in Kingman, Ariz., came Thursday in the trial of Kelly Fischer of Colorado City, Ariz., a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints charged with having sex with a minor and conspiracy to commit sex with a minor. The charges are punishable by up to four months to two years in prison.
A jury was expected to begin deliberations Friday following closing arguments by Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith and defense attorney Bruce Griffen. Seven other men face identical charges, with the next case set for trial next week.
Smith provided the jury with birth certificates that showed the girl was just over 17 when she gave birth in Utah in 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The child's birth certificate listed Fischer, then 33, as the father.
Former FLDS members Richard Holm and Isaac Wyler testified of their experiences in the sect.
Holm said his own two plural marriages occurred after he met with former church prophet Rulon T. Jeffs, was told he was to be "blessed" and was then sealed to a woman within hours.
Holm, who left the church in 2003, said he had no direct experience with how current prophet Warren Jeffs conducts marriages.
Wyler testified that courtship and displays of affection are not allowed and marriages occur in secret. Still, he described seeing Fischer and the girl riding horses together many times, and said it "looked like to me a little bit of courting going on." Later, he saw the girl seated close to Fischer in a vehicle.
"In our religion and the way we did things up there, you'd rotate wives that was sitting by you," Wyler said. He subsequently saw the girl was pregnant.
With the jurors excused, Griffen characterized testimony from Holm and Wyler as "guess, assumption and speculation." He asked the judge to find the state had failed to make its case because it did not pin down where Fischer and the girl had sex or that anyone else was involved in arranging the union.
Judge Steven F. Conn refused, saying he heard enough in the testimony to send the case to the jury.