Local

Reporter's presence stymies polygamist leader's lawyers

By JIM SECKLER/The Daily News

Sunday, November 30, 2008 10:30 PM CST

KINGMAN - The attorney for the convicted leader of a Colorado City polygamist church is asking to depose a witness in the case of his client, Warren Steed Jeffs.

Jeffs' defense attorney, Mike Piccarreta, was supposed to interview Flora Jessop on Nov. 24 in Phoenix for Jeffs' two Mohave County cases. Jessop was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Colorado City who left the polygamist community in 1986.

In asking Superior Court Judge Steven Conn for the deposition, Piccarreta said Jessop showed up at the interview Monday with a Channel 3 television crew and reporter Mike Watkiss, who also reports for CNN. Jessop's interview was necessary to find out her knowledge of phone call believed to be a hoax. The phone call triggered a raid on the FLDS compound in Texas and allowed Texas authorities to obtain a warrant to search the compound. Piccarreta claims Watkiss' reports are one-sided against the FLDS.

“The only possible result of Jessop's latest publicity stunt is to generate adverse publicity to prejudice the defendant in the local media and possibly on the national level,” Piccarreta said. “It is proper for a trial court to prohibit media recordings of pretrial interviews or depositions.”

Piccarreta will interview Texas Ranger Brooks Long, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran and Schleicher County Deputy Sheriff John Connor in two weeks in San Angelo, Texas. The Texas officers were involved in the April raid at the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas. The defense attorney claims they collected tainted evidence that was allegedly seized illegally during the raid.

Jeffs, 52, is charged in Mohave County with four counts of sexual conduct with a minor in two 2007 cases involving two underage girls. The crimes allegedly took place in the summers of 2002 and 2003. Jeffs is also charged with felony sexual assault of a child under 17 and aggravated sexual assault in Schleicher County Texas.

Jeffs was convicted in 2007 in St. George, Utah on two counts of rape as an accomplice and was sentenced in November 2007 to 10 years in a Utah prison.