San Angelo, USA - In a pre-trial hearing today, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther denied a state request to move the trial of Allan Eugene Keate from Schleicher County to Tom Green County.
Keate is the second member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and resident of the Yearning for Zion Ranch to go to criminal trial as an outcome of the state's historic raid on the ranch in April 2008.
Keate's attorney opposed the motion. Outside the courthouse after the decision, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said the state is attempting to distance the trial from the setting of the ranch raid.
"The state wants to isolate people from what they have done. They took away the children and the mothers, and now they're taking away the fathers," he said.
The Child Protective Services Department and law enforcement raided the secretive 1,700-acre ranch over several days in the spring of 2008, acting on a complaint that later turned out to be a hoax. During the process, 439 children and most of the women on the ranch were taken into protective custody, resulting in a series of custody hearings.
The children all were eventually returned to their families, but evidence seized during the raids is now being used to prosecute several of the sect's men on child sex abuse charges.
The FLDS practice polygamy, taking what are termed "spiritual" wives. The first of the 12 men to go trial, Raymond Merril Jessop, was sentenced last month to 10 years in prison by a Schleicher County jury. Merril Jessop was charged with taking an underage girl as one of his wives. Several of the remaining men face similar charges.
"The bottom line is, this is selective prosecution. They're trying to justify these terrible acts," Willie Jessop said, referring to the 2008 raid. "This is the state trying to make victims. There are people who understand that. They would understand in Schleicher County."
Willie Jessop said the state is prosecuting the ranch residents for their religious beliefs, and said he wondered whether any neighborhood of several hundred households would stand up as well under the degree of scrutiny the ranch residents were subjected to.
Irene Jackson, Walther's clerk, said Friday afternoon that provision was made for Keate's trial to be moved to Tom Green County if a jury cannot be seated in Schleicher County.
The trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 7. If jury selection fails, it will start in Tom Green County on Dec. 9.