Mormon Polygamist Asks Judge to Throw Out His Rape Conviction

Comparing a religious leader to a football cheerleader is a creative legal argument, to say the least.

Jeffs' lawyers want his conviction tossed
By Brooke Adams The Salt Lake Tribune

Polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs' attorneys want a judge to throw out his conviction, arguing the case against him was speculative and ''purely circumstantial.''

No evidence showed Jeffs was aware of or encouraged nonconsensual sex between Elissa Wall and her former husband, Allen Steed, the attorneys argue in a motion filed Tuesday.

They asked 5th District Judge James L. Shumate to dismiss the jury's Sept. 25 decision to convict Jeffs of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. Shumate is set to sentence Jeffs on Tuesday.
Jeffs, 51, conducted Wall's 2001 marriage to Steed and later counseled her to stay in the union. In 2001, Jeffs was first counselor in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect is based in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. ...

The eight-word Old Testament phrase Jeffs recited during the ceremony - "Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the Earth" - has been used for centuries and cannot be interpreted as a command to submit to unwanted sex, they argue. "Imagine the mischief if such symbolic or ceremonial terms could give rise to criminal liability," the document states....

"In a different context, woe be the cheerleaders who just yelled, 'Hit 'em again, Hit 'em again, harder, harder,' if one football player then violently assaults an opposing player between plays." ...