"You have to ask yourself, then," he said. "Why would sex happen? Because she wanted it to happen...What happened in the bedroom was no different than anything else in their relationship. She did exactly what she wanted to do. She was not subservient to (her husband.)"

Bugden spoke for about two hours, saying Jeffs' prosecution was about religion. He said prosecutors could have filed other charges against Jeffs, including solemnizing an unlawful marriage. Instead, they chose rape as an accomplice.

Belnap countered by telling the jury, "You don't have to find that this is religious persecution. Perhaps that is what (Jeffs' attorneys) want you to do. But if you apply the law, you will find Warren Jeffs guilty."

Belnap said that Jeffs was wrong to force the girl to marry her teenage cousin and then encourage her to engage in sexual relations with the man.

"When a 14-year-old is persuaded to submit to sexual intercourse, there is no consent," he said.

Rape as an accomplice is a first-degree felony. If convicted, Jeffs faces a possible sentence of five years to life in prison.

He said, she said

Jeffs was first counselor in the Fundamentalist LDS Church at the time of the 2001 marriage ceremony. His father, Rulon Jeffs, was considered the church's prophet, and the girl's stepfather, Fred Jessop, was the second counselor. Both those two men have since died, and Warren Jeffs is revered by faithful members of the FLDS Church as their prophet.

Wall, now 21, testified last week that she did not want to be married to her cousin and that she had begged Jessop and Jeffs to be spared from the union. No one came to her defense, she testified, adding that she felt her mother and other adults betrayed her by insisting that she go through with the ceremony.

After the marriage, Wall said, she met with Jeffs to complain about her husband touching her in ways she didn't like. Jeffs, she claims, told her to repent and return home to her husband.

"He said I was not living up to my vows," she testified. "He told me I needed to go home and give myself mind, body and soul to my husband."

Wall testified she was terrified the first time the couple had sex. Her husband told her, "It's time for you to be a wife," when he forced himself on her, she said. The event traumatized her so much that she attempted suicide by swallowing bottles of pain reliever, although she later threw the pills up.

Wall's former husband, Allen Steed, testified he loved his wife and tried hard to make the marriage work. Now 26, Steed said he barely knew his cousin when the two married. He admitted that his attempts at moving marital relations along were awkward and clumsy. He wrote her love notes during their three years of marriage, which the defense and prosecution both used as evidence.