San Angelo, USA - The leader of a polygamy sanctioning religious sect is set to have a venue hearing today regarding his trial set for Monday on charges of sexual assault of a child.
Attorneys for Warren Jeffs, 55, the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, have tried to move the venue away from Tom Green County, where the trial is set for July 25. He also has a felony bigamy trial scheduled for Oct. 3.
The default venue location was Schleicher County, but 51st District Judge Barbara Walther opted to change the venue to Tom Green.
Jeffs' attorneys have said they want the trial to be moved to a county outside of Walther's district because of pretrial publicity they believe is adverse for their client.
Jeffs has gone through several attorneys, firing one hours after retaining him, and getting rid of another, a court-appointed attorney, after retaining Jeff Kearney of Fort Worth, whom he also fired.
He retained another attorney, Houston-based Emily Detoto, to try to recuse Walther after the first recusal attempt failed. Detoto said she has no intention of representing Jeffs for the trial.
Two other attorneys, brothers Robert and Gary Udashen of Dallas, have been hired to represent Jeffs for a suppression of evidence hearing, but they have filed a motion saying that they do not want to be responsible for being his lead counsel either.
Jeffs' attorneys have argued that Walther was not impartial, that she had received threats from the FLDS, that she was warned of the FLDS by outside law enforcement and thus had extra security, that she made a call and received calls during the raid on the FLDS Yearning for Zion Ranch in Schleicher County that provided the evidence against FLDS members who have been criminally prosecuted by her, and that she signed the search warrant for the ranch and thus would be biased in a hearing on the suppression of evidence.
The state has argued that none of Walther's actions were prejudicially extrajudicial, and that she didn't call for the increased security.
Visiting state District Judge John Hyde of Midland heard arguments for both recusal hearings and denied both recusal requests.
"The testimony presented against her rests on innuendo and supposition," Hyde stated in his most recent order against the recusals.
Walther will preside over the venue hearing today.
Kearney estimated at a previous hearing that Jeffs' trial on sexual assault charges would take at least a month.
About 700 bad acts are alleged on the part of Jeffs, Kearney said, although Walther sealed the bad acts list to avoid pretrial publicity.
Jeffs has appeared seven times in pretrials, including the recusal hearings, since he came to Texas at the end of November.
He is being held in jail in Schleicher County.
The charge against Jeffs consists of two counts of sexual assault of a child. Both allegedly occurred when Jeffs was about 50 years old. One charge is aggravated because the alleged victim was younger than 14 years old. The aggravated charge is a first-degree felony punishable by five to 99 years in prison and the other is a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison.