February hearing set on searches of FLDS property
 
By JIM SECKLER
Mohave Daily News
 
KINGMAN - Subpoenas were issued for four Texas and Arizona law enforcement officers in the criminal case against Warren Steed Jeffs.

Jeffs' attorney, Mike Piccarreta, filed criminal subpoenas against a Mohave County probation officer, Mohave County sheriff's deputy, a Ranger with the Texas Department of Public Safety and a Schleicher County sheriff's deputy also from Texas.

The subpoenas call for the officers to testify at a hearing Feb. 17 before Superior Court Judge Steven Conn to argue a defense motion to exclude from Jeffs' trial, evidence seized during a 2008 raid by law enforcement on a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compound in Texas.

Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith previously told Conn that he does not plan to introduce any evidence from the raid at the Texas compound at Jeffs' upcoming trial in Mohave County.

Piccarreta's argument is that Arizona law enforcement investigators were "tainted" by evidence that was allegedly seized illegally during the raid. The motion claims that the phone call that triggered the Texas raid was a hoax and officers used the hoax to obtain a warrant to search each house at the compound.

Arizona law enforcement officers also spent time in Texas with illegally seized items and documents.

Jeffs, 54, is the former leader of the FLDS, a polygamist church in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. He is in Mohave County Jail facing four felony charges including four counts of sexual conduct with a minor in two 2007 cases. He is charged with being an accomplice of two men who had sex with two underage girls, which allegedly took place in 2002 and 2003.

Jeffs also is charged with felony sexual assault of a child under 17 and aggravated sexual assault in Schleicher County, Texas, after an April 2008 raid by Texas officers at the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas.
 
MohaveDailyNews.com
Originally published Sunday, January 24, 2010
 
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