2 men arrested in FLDS dispute

An ongoing feud over land in the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., has now led to the arrests of two members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church and placed a "stand-down" on litigation over the United Effort Plan Trust in jeopardy.

Mohave County sheriff's deputies were called about someone plowing over a field on a swath of farmland known as Berry Knoll about 11:30 p.m. Monday. The man who called claimed that his fields were being plowed over. Shane Stubbs told sheriff's deputies he had leased those fields from the court-appointed special fiduciary of the UEP Trust.

When police were called again on Tuesday, deputies arrested Richard Clarence Jessop, 37, for investigation of felony criminal damage and misdemeanor criminal trespass. Mohave County sheriff's spokeswoman Trish Carter said that when deputies were on the scene investigating, Jessop and another man started up tractors and started plowing again.

"He was very uncooperative," she said. "He would not turn the engine off. He would not say who he was. He was taken into custody."

Jessop was booked into the Mohave County Jail. Thomas L. Jessop, 21, the driver of the other tractor, was arrested for misdemeanor trespassing, and he was cited and later released, Carter said.

But FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said the men have the right to farm that land, and no one has shown them that the land had been leased to someone else.

"It's the church's land," he told the Deseret News on Wednesday. "They've been farming it for 30 years. When did they get terminated for being on it?"

The confrontation is the latest in the feud over the UEP Trust, which controls homes, businesses and property in the two towns. In 2005, the court took control of the trust, amid allegations that FLDS leaders had mismanaged it. A judge appointed a special fiduciary to oversee it and ordered reforms that do away with the communal-living concept and pave the way for private-property ownership.

The FLDS members recently went to court to challenge many of the reforms and the pending sale of land on Berry Knoll, which members say was prophesied to be a temple site. The court challenge led to a "stand down," while the Utah Attorney General's Office, the FLDS, the fiduciary and others negotiated a settlement to all the litigation.

Ex-FLDS members have accused FLDS members of violating the stand down.

"Their idea of stand down is, 'Talk to our lawyers while we do what we want,' " said Isaac Wyler, an ex-FLDS member who lives in the border towns and works for the special fiduciary.

Willie Jessop said there is a double-standard where FLDS members get arrested, but non-FLDS members don't.