Posted on 12/22/2009 8:08:53 PM PST by delacoert
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Allan Keate raised his two cuffed hands Thursday, shortly after he heard the sentence of 33 years in prison for sexual assault of a child, and smiled briefly at the gallery, at more than a dozen fellow members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — men and women, adults young and old.
They had sat there regularly for more than a week to follow Keate’s fate.
Lead defense attorney Randy Wilson went to the FLDS members after Keate was escorted to the nearby Schleicher County Jail.
Wilson embraced one of the older FLDS members. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Outside the makeshift courthouse, lead prosecutor Eric Nichols stepped into the harsh light of television cameras at about 10 p.m. and read a prepared statement.
He said Keate’s victim, 15 years old at the time of the assault, which occurred around April 2006, had been in a “celestial marriage” twice.
Celestial marriages are unofficial religious betrothals that FLDS members use to practice polygamy.
Nichols said Keate had given away three of his daughters in marriage to older men. Two of those daughters were 15 and one was 14, and the last was given away to Warren Jeffs, then prophet of the FLDS who has been imprisoned for aiding in child rape by transporting a young girl across state lines.
Nichols said he was satisfied with the sentence.
“Any time a jury in Texas assesses punishment, it’s a good day for the justice system in Texas,” he said. “Justice was again served today.”
That “again” referenced the trial of Raymond Merril Jessop, convicted in November by a Schleicher County jury on a child sexual assault charge and sentenced to 10 years and an $8,000 fine. He is in the Tom Green County Jail.
Staff at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said the decision about where both men will go to prison is a process that can take a few months.
Jessop is in the Tom Green County Jail as a prisoner of Schleicher County. The Schleicher County sheriff’s office staff refused to comment on Keate’s location.
The jury’s decision for punishment was different in the two cases because of the enhancement in Keate’s indictment. Rather than a second-degree felony with the option of two to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000, which is what Jessop faced, jurors in the Keate trial were to choose a punishment for a first-degree felony, with five to 99 years or life in prison if they believed the enhancement applied.
The enhancement says that the second-degree felony of sexual assault of a child becomes a first-degree felony if the person is prohibited from marrying or living with the victim under the appearance of marriage.
Attorney General Greg Abbott released a statement on the punishment, commending the jurors for choosing imprisonment rather than probation.
“Despite the defendant’s request for probation, the jury recognized the seriousness of his crime and decided he should spend 33 years in prison for this criminal offense,” Abbott said.
Abbott was in the Eldorado courtroom at the beginning of the trial for the jury selection.
FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said the attorney general’s appearance affirmed that the trials and the historic raid on the ranch in April 2008 amount to political persecution.
“It doesn’t matter how many children you take, how many women you put on buses, it doesn’t make it right,“ Willie Jessop said. “For the AG to come in here, he has an agenda against the church. ... It doesn’t matter how much they want to make it a noble cause. It’s not. There was no victim.”
Throughout the trial, jurors heard from state witnesses who described life inside the FLDS, including the testimony of Rebecca Musser, who said that if special events were not properly recorded on Earth, they would not be recorded in heaven, and without the blessings of heaven the person would “burn in hell.”
The defense brought in an expert on Mormonism with some FLDS familiarity to say that Musser’s testimony wasn’t true of all who believed in the same sacred Mormon writings, that examples of “the Book of Life” in heaven and “the Book of Remembrance” on Earth are spiritual metaphors.
The importance of the sacredness of the writings reflected how much weight the jury would give documents recovered from the FLDS Yearning For Zion Ranch.
Law enforcement personnel described in detail how they went throughout the ranch collecting the evidence that placed Keate and his family on the ranch near the time of the assault.
Trials for the other indictments have been scheduled through December of next year. The next trial, for sexual assault charges against Michael Emack, is scheduled for Jan. 25. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Jan. 7, when the location of Emack’s trial likely will be determined.
Keate and Jessop are two of 10 FLDS men indicted by a Schleicher County grand jury in November 2008 on charges of sexual assault of a child in connection with allegedly illegal marriages to underage girls. Emack will be the third to stand trial.
Most evidence against the men was gathered during the state’s historic raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado in April 2008, when truckloads of documents were removed along with women and children in the largest child custody case in U.S. history.
There is no case. Not a single shred of evidence. Nothing to see here. Move along now.
Not exactly a Mormon booster huh.
PS I disagree strenuously with Mormon theology, however it would only be fair to point out that all the girls involved would have been considered of marriageable age in the days of Moses.
Now Texas is doing it correctly. One perp at a time.
Yeah, but if a Muslim in America decides to “marry” and have sex with a 10 year-old girl because Mohammed did it, everyone her on FR would be up in arms about it.
Well, there are LAWS against raping little girls in this country at this time.
All these kangaroo court farce trials will be thrown out for illegal search and seizure — a rank violation on the 4th amendment requirement of probable cause for the raid. The raid was illegal per se and was based on a known hoax telephone call from a Colorado nut case that they refuse to extradite because it is so embarrassing to the state. This obvious “African American female voice” on the phone never set foot within 100 miles of the place. The damned caller ID showed she was in COLORADO!! The judge is the idiot that kidnapped 436 children ripping them from their mother’s arm and was humiliated by the Supreme Court as dead wrong. What a joke.
It is one of the many LAWS about which the God of the bible would say “begone, I never knew you.”
Few freepers give a hoot about the Koran. Many respect the Bible.
The girls would have been of marriageable age in the days of my great-great grandmother.
She had a choice in the matter.
I don't know exactly what years that would be, but in the 1800s the average age for marriage for females was around 23.
My g’g’ grandmother married in the late 1870s, just shy of 15 to a 17 y.o. - not a shotgun wedding. And my great grandmother married at 17 to a 21 y.o. in 1904 - not a shotgun wedding.
They weren’t married off by their father or a prophet to another old man.
I knew my great-grandparents - their marriage lasted almost 70 years and they were devoted.
It is for the best that it was broken up. But I agree that I think the state may have overstepped in the way it was done. Probably no good way to crack a cult though...
I also didn't like the way they put all the girls in Foster Homes after pulling them out of there. For most of the girls this was the only place they knew, for better or worse. Seems like it would have been better to drag all the adults out, at least the males, and bring a group of Counselors in until it could be sorted out.
Just didn't seem like it was very well thought out considering how long the cult had been there and how long the state was looking for an angle to break it up.
FLDS isn’t Mormon, any more than Lutherans are Catholic.
Of course, if it was a female schoolteacher and a 15-year-old-boy, a lot of Freepers would be asking to see a picture before deciding if the perp was guilty.
More seriously, I can’t think of a single female teacher who got anything CLOSE to a 30+-year sentence for having sex with a 15-year-old boy (or a 15-year-old-girl, for that matter).
They weren’t married off by their father or a prophet to another old man.
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I married at barely 17 and it wasn’t a shotgun wedding either but it’s truly dysfunctional for a father, of any religion, to allow his daughter to marry at such a young age, back then or today. It’s just wrong.
Fathers should protect, not be an accomplice to their daughter’s loss of virginty, and father should set the example for a future husband.
Well YFZ has over 1000 residents right now. No “break up”. Here is the travesty. If you drive to your nearest high school and demand the number of 17 year old (or younger) girls who were pregnant in the last 4 years , you will find 40 or 50 in that high school alone. Then demand the number of police reports for statutory rape on those cases and you will find “none”. This was about white Mormons — It was not on the complaint of the mothers. It was gross racial and religious discrimination. Can you imagine the pregnancies of 17 and under in your city?? Rape!! Rape!! Do something!!!
That happened, but the average age for females in the 1800s was about 23.
I don’t know there are a few freepers who don’t think the Bible is a literal retelling of history.
Welcome to FR, but I think you were looking for DU.
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