Texas attorneys battle over who should represent 17-year-old FLDS member

SAN ANGELO, Texas — A hearing over who should represent a 17-year-old member of the Fundamentalist LDS Church will resume here today.

Wednesday's hearing on whether to replace Natalie Malonis as the court-appointed attorney for Teresa Jeffs was plagued with delays, closed-door conferences and feuding lawyers.

The contentious hearing ended late in the evening with one attorney refusing to give back an evidence exhibit Malonis had withdrawn, prompting the judge to order another closed-door meeting.

Lawyers packed the tiny courtroom here to listen to a series of legal questions on whether Malonis should continue to represent Jeffs.

"The question is whether or not the parents have a right to select the attorney ad litem or whether the court does," said Texas 51st District Judge Barbara Walther.

Alan Futrell, a San Antonio lawyer hired by Jeffs' mother, Annette, to represent the girl in an ongoing criminal probe, is seeking to have Malonis replaced as her attorney ad litem.

"There are no allegations that I have failed to perform my duty," Malonis told the judge. "The young lady has expressed a preference for another ad litem."

Malonis has argued that if all her client's preferences were followed, it would place her at risk.

"She is substituting her judgment for the child in conflict with her wishes," Futrell told the judge.

Jeffs sent a letter in June to the judge, seeking a new lawyer. A Child Protective Services worker testified that Annette Jeffs said her daughter had help in crafting it.

"Annette told me Teresa talked to several adults and was thinking about getting a different ad litem," CPS worker Angie Voss said.

Malonis sought special protections when the girl was returned to her mother in June, after two Texas courts ordered all of the children taken in the YFZ raid to be released from state custody. Jeffs was ordered to have no contact with her father, FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, and her purported husband, Raymond Jessop.

The girl is believed to have been married at 15 to Jessop, who has been indicted by a Texas grand jury in connection with criminal allegations of sex abuse at the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch. Jeffs has gone public in news media interviews and on Web sites insisting she is not a sex abuse victim.