Kingman, USA - An Arizona judge has canceled a two-day hearing in the state's case against polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs after granting a defense motion barring use of any evidence found at the group's Texas ranch in 2008.
Defense attorney Michael Piccarreta requested the hearing, which had been set for Feb. 17-18 in Kingman, Ariz., to argue that the state's case was tainted because lead investigators reviewed evidence seized during an April 2008 investigation at the Yearning For Zion Ranch. The ranch is home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Piccarreta also said several key witnesses accompanied law officers onto the ranch during the investigation, reviewed material they seized and testified in subsequent criminal trials in Texas.
Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn vacated the hearing, though, after Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith agreed not to use any evidence taken from the ranch or to refer to that evidence in questioning witnesses.
Jeffs, 57, faces four counts of being an accomplice to sexual conduct with a minor related to two marriages he allegedly performed that involved underage girls. He is already serving two five-to-life sentences in Utah based on one of those cases -- a 2001 marriage between Elissa Wall, then 14, and Allen Steed, then 19. The Utah case involved charges of rape as an accomplice.
Conn noted in his ruling that Jeffs has been jailed in Mohave County awaiting trial for almost two years. That, the judge said, "is ironically the maximum prison sentence he is facing in either of these two cases."
The judge gave attorneys until Feb. 22 to decide the next step.