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.
Sorry I added point number seven when you didn’t number it.
If I made any other mistakes not to your liking please feel free to point them out.
“Mormon” isn’t a religion, it’s a sect. In some cases branches denounce the name “mormon” (the reorganized church of jesus christ of latter day saints).
The FLDS is to “Mormon” as Orthodox Presbyterian is to the PC-USA. You are correct, they use the same bible (with some differences) but so do the Lutherans and Catholics, and nobody would ever blame the Catholic church for the ELCA move on gay pastors (heck, you wouldn’t even blame the other brands of Lutheran church).
None of which would have been condoned by Moses except for the limited slavery of captives displaced through the God-directed conquest spelled out in the Old Covenant. 180 degrees contrary to your assertion, boys of 13 and girls of 12 were allowed to CHOOSE. In modern Judaism they refer to that as bar/bat mitzvah. Today’s “enlightened” regulations take the choice away. This flies in God’s face.
You’re sick, and should seek help immediately. Physically, many girls that young can be hurt by the sexual act especially with an adult. You do realize, don’t you, that very few of the fLDS pervs are young men? Most are drooling pedophiles. That you can condone this is way beyond me.
What is up with the book. I like her ideas but writing a book on this forum is a little overboard. That was rationalization. But everyone has the right to their opinion, although I like yours better. Everything can be taken out of context and damage lives for good. I commmented on this because this is an issue I hold dear to my heart with 5 daughters, but it always takes two to cause a mess and sometimes it is the lack of parental involvement that can cause the problem. Good response, but I would like to start out with no enemies you know, but have to speak my opionion. I cannot be on air late at night due to my work schedule and resposibilities with my children.
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