When Jeffs was charged, federal prosecutors allege he was on the run as a fugitive. He was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list when he was arrested during a traffic stop outside Las Vegas in August 2006.

In January, Jeffs was rushed to the hospital after suffering an undisclosed medical problem. At the time, Washington County sheriff's deputies said Jeffs underwent a series of tests and was cleared to return to the Purgatory Jail. They have refused to say what Jeffs suffered from, citing medical privacy laws.

In February, a closed-door hearing was held with 5th District Judge James Shumate. A court docket said the hearing requested "confidential and privileged physician contact." A transcript of the hearing was filed under seal.

Jeffs is being kept in administrative segregation at the jail, where he is allowed to make phone calls and receive visitors for about an hour a day.

Meanwhile, Jeffs' attorneys will argue today that the FLDS leader's upcoming trial should be moved from St. George to Salt Lake County. Citing pre-trial publicity, Jeffs' defense team commissioned a poll to bolster their claim that the FLDS leader cannot get a fair trial in Washington County.

"Given 24-hour cable news programming, Internet access, radio and newspaper coverage, there is no 'place far enough away where such influence would be a negligible factor if present at all,"' Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap wrote in a response filed in 5th District Court.

In other motions the judge is being asked to consider today, defense attorneys are asking that Utah's rape-as-an-accomplice law be declared "unconstitutionally vague" and for the order binding Jeffs over for trial to be quashed.

During a preliminary hearing in November, defense attorneys got the alleged victim — identified only as "Jane Doe IV" — to acknowledge she never explicitly said she was raped.

Prosecutors said the victim expressed her lack of consent through words and conduct.

"The victim's words and conduct clearly expressed that she did not even want to touch her purported husband — let alone engage in intimate sexual contact," Belnap wrote.

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com