Texas, feds wait their turns in Jeffs case

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah Supreme Court decision that overturns polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs' 2007 criminal conviction won't automatically make him a free man. Even if Utah doesn't retry him, Texas and federal prosecutors are waiting to move forward with their own cases.

Justices on Tuesday unanimously said Jeffs should get a new trial because state attorneys overreached in their argument that performing the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin amounted to facilitating a rape.

Utah officials now have two weeks to seek a rehearing before the state's high court and then a month to decide if they'll retry the 54-year-old head of the Fundamentalist LDS Church on charges of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice.

A judge Wednesday set an Aug. 18 date for a hearing on a motion from Jeffs' defense attorneys seeking a "speedy trial before a jury of his peers."

Meanwhile, authorities in Texas are trying to get Jeffs sent there to face charges in connection with his own alleged marriages to underage girls in 2005. A federal indictment stemming from Jeffs' stint as a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list is also pending.

"He would not go free," said Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Utah.

Any federal prosecution would likely come after cases in Utah and Texas are resolved, Rydalch said, but in the hours after the ruling, it was unclear just how the states would proceed.

"We're going to take a look at this case anew and do a legal analysis of the ruling," Deputy Washington County Attorney Brian Filter said. "We're going to talk to the victim and to law enforcement. What we've done from the beginning is tried to seek justice in the case, and that's what we're going to continue to do. Where that takes us, I don't know."

In 2007, a jury convicted Jeffs on two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in the 2001 spiritual marriage of Elissa Wall and Allen Steed.

Texas authorities have charged Jeff with bigamy, sexual assault of a child and aggravated assault related to alleged marriages between Jeffs and girls ages 17 and 15 in 2005. The cases are based on information from family records gathered during a 2008 raid on a church ranch near Eldorado.

After Tuesday's ruling, however, an extradition hearing in 3rd District Court was canceled because Texas' request to bring Jeffs there was based on his status as a convicted felon in custody. It will now have to be refiled in 5th District Court.

Jeffs will oppose extradition, his attorney, Walter Bugden, said.