Salt Lake City, USA - Is Warren Jeffs a religious leader merely offering counsel to a troubled marriage or an accomplice to a rape? The question was put before the Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday, considering an appeal of the polygamist sect leader's conviction on two counts of rape as an accomplice.
Jeffs, 53, was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to a pair of 5-to-life terms for performing a marriage between then-14-year-old Elissa Wall and her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed. Wall, who was the state's star witness in the case against Jeffs, has said she was forced into the marriage.
"He performed a marriage," said Wally Bugden, Jeffs' defense attorney. "It may well have been an unlawful marriage -- that should have been the charge, but not accomplice to rape."
Jeffs' attorneys argued a number of points before the state's top court. They said he was not only charged with the wrong crime, but that the state mixed and matched the law to prosecute Jeffs. Bugden contended that Wall never explicitly said she was raped, leading Jeffs to offer what he thought was religious counsel like any other religious figure.
"When this marriage ran into rocky times, he recommended the same way that any religious counselor, that any religious leader would recommend to try to make this marriage work," Bugden told reporters outside of court.
But prosecutors say when Wall complained about being sexually abused by her husband, Jeffs told her to be obedient and commanded that she give herself "mind, body and soul" to her husband. Assistant Utah Attorney General Laura Dupaix said Jeffs was more than just a religious counselor -- he controlled every aspect of life in the FLDS communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.
"He was a mastermind," she said. "He arranged this marriage, this illegal marriage, for a 14-year-old girl who begged him not to make her do it. If that's not rape, I don't know what is."
Bugden didn't dispute that Jeffs held a position of special trust, but said prosecutors elected to go after Jeffs because he is the leader of an unpopular religion.
"Unquestionably," he said. "This is an unpopular religion and the state decided to find a way to bring down this unpopular religious figure."
Before a crowd of FLDS members, lawyers and Wall herself, the Utah Supreme Court justices questioned if the same charge could be leveled against other religious leaders. Dupaix noted that the victim in this case, was a minor.
"He placed this child into a situation where she could not refuse to have sex," Dupaix said.
The Utah Supreme Court took the case under advisement with no deadline to issue a ruling. Jeffs is currently in an Arizona jail awaiting trial on charges accusing him of performing more child-bride marriages. He is also facing criminal charges in Texas, where an FLDS member is currently on trial.
Jeffs has also been indicted by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City on an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution charge stemming from his time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.