Dates set for trials of 12 FLDS men

Trial dates have been scheduled for a group of men from the Fundamentalist LDS Church charged in connection with underage marriages.

The men all appeared before a judge in an Eldorado, Texas, court on Monday where a schedule was laid out for the dozen men facing grand jury indictments.

Raymond Merril Jessop, 37, will be the first to go on trial Oct. 26 on a charge of sexual assault of a child. The rest will take place in a monthly succession based on the number of indictments, the Texas Attorney General's Office said Monday.

The exception will be FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, 53, who is incarcerated in Arizona pending trial there on sexual misconduct charges. Jeffs is facing charges of sexual assault of a child and bigamy in Texas.

In the immediate future, lawyers for the men will be filing motions to challenge the hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence seized when law enforcement raided the YFZ Ranch in April. A hearing on any motions will be held May 13.

"Our belief all along is that law enforcement was never here looking for someone, it was an agenda," FLDS member and spokesman Willie Jessop told the Deseret News after court was over. "We were concerned about their motives before they ever even got in the gate."

The men were indicted by a Schleicher County grand jury last year in the aftermath of the raid on the YFZ Ranch. In April, law enforcement and child welfare workers went to investigate a phone call from someone claiming to be a pregnant 16-year-old trapped in an abusive, polygamous marriage. Once there, authorities claim to have found other signs of abuse, prompting a judge to order the removal of all of the children.

The 439 children were returned to their parents in June, when two Texas courts ruled the state acted improperly. Only 15 children remain under court supervision in what was once the nation's largest-ever child custody case.

The phone call itself is believed to be a hoax. A Colorado woman with a history of making hoax calls is considered a "person of interest" in the case by Texas Rangers.

Rozita Swinton, 34, was scheduled to appear in a Castle Rock, Colo., court on Monday in an unrelated case. Swinton is facing a probation violation from a 2007 conviction of false reporting, where she pleaded guilty and received a deferred judgment. Last year, she was arrested in Colorado Springs in another case of making a phony call for help.

Court records show Monday's hearing in Castle Rock was postponed another month. Swinton's trial in Colorado Springs also has been delayed while she undergoes inpatient mental health treatment.

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com

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