AZ Official Defends Texas Jeffs Evidence
 
The Associated Press
KPHO CBS 5 - Phoenix
Warren Jeffs

Warren Jeffs

KINGMAN, Ariz. -- An Arizona county attorney prosecuting polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs said Monday he'll oppose any attempt by Jeffs' defense to prohibit use of evidence seized during a raid on the sect's Texas compound.

Jeffs awaits trial in Arizona on four counts of being an accomplice to sexual conduct with a minor. Those charges stem from the marriages of two teenage girls and their adult male relatives.

Jeffs defense attorney Michael Piccarreta had told the judge presiding over the Arizona case that evidence from the Texas raid should be barred on the grounds that the raid was based on a call that Texas authorities should have known was a hoax.

"They proceeded to search the premises nevertheless," Piccarreta told The Associated Press in an interview Friday after a hearing before Judge Steven Conn of Mohave County Superior Court.

Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith responded Monday by saying he believes that Texas authorities acted in good faith in their April raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound.

Their actions were "appropriate and constitutional," Smith said. "If they get information and it later turns out to be false, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the (search) warrant."

Factors that need to be considered is whether the information was regarded as reliable, whether there were indications that more investigation was needed and whether circumstances demanded action on an emergency basis, the prosecutor said.

Texas authorities were looking for evidence of underage girls forced into marriages and sex.

The FLDS believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, but its plural marriages were generally only church-sanctioned, not legal. The church is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
 
KPHO.com
Originally published August 25, 2008
 
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