{"id":510,"date":"2008-02-26T15:19:57","date_gmt":"2008-02-26T15:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs.php"},"modified":"2008-02-26T15:19:57","modified_gmt":"2008-02-26T15:19:57","slug":"polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs","title":{"rendered":"Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press<\/strong><br \/>\nPhoenix &#8211; U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was handed over to Arizona authorities Tuesday to face charges that he arranged the marriages of two teenage girls to older men.<br \/>\nHe already has been convicted in Utah in connection with an arranged marriage involving a 14-year-old girl.<br \/>\nJeffs, 52, the former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is scheduled to appear in court to enter a plea Wednesday in Kingman, in northwestern Arizona.<br \/>\nHe is charged as an accomplice with four counts of incest and four counts of sexual contact with a minor in an indictment.<br \/>\nMembers of the church live in the isolated twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.<br \/>\nJeffs, 52, will plead not guilty to the Arizona charges at Wednesday&#8217;s hearing, said defense attorney Mike Piccarreta.<br \/>\nJeffs attorney, Mike Piccarreta, plans to ask the judge for a change of venue, saying Kingman is too close to St. George, Utah, the site of Jeffs&#8217; first trial, for him to get a fair trial here. The cities, separated by the Grand Canyon, are a more than 200-mile (322-kilometer) drive apart.<br \/>\nProsecutor Matt Smith said the trial, which will be months from now, should be held in Mohave County where Kingman is because that&#8217;s where the alleged crimes occurred.<br \/>\nIt has been 2 1\/2 years since county prosecutors filed charges against Jeffs and he went into hiding.<br \/>\nHe was arrested in August 2006 in Nevada and was convicted last year in Utah of rape as an accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. At the time of his arrest, he was on the FBI&#8217;s Most Wanted list.<br \/>\nJeffs was named president, or prophet, of the FLDS church in 2002.<br \/>\nThe mainstream Mormon church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, renounced polygamy more than a century ago, excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.<br \/>\nJeffs was sentenced in Utah to serve two consecutive terms of five years to life in prison. Smith has said that if Jeffs is convicted in Arizona he would have to finish his Utah sentence before doing time here.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press Phoenix &#8211; U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was handed over to Arizona authorities Tuesday to face charges that he arranged the marriages of two teenage girls to older men. He already has been convicted in Utah in connection with an arranged marriage involving a 14-year-old girl. Jeffs, 52, the former leader of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press Phoenix &#8211; U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was handed over to Arizona authorities Tuesday to face charges that he arranged the marriages of two teenage girls to older men. He already has been convicted in Utah in connection with an arranged marriage involving a 14-year-old girl. Jeffs, 52, the former leader of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-26T15:19:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There","og_description":"Associated Press Phoenix &#8211; U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was handed over to Arizona authorities Tuesday to face charges that he arranged the marriages of two teenage girls to older men. He already has been convicted in Utah in connection with an arranged marriage involving a 14-year-old girl. Jeffs, 52, the former leader of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-02-26T15:19:57+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs","name":"Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-26T15:19:57+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-26T15:19:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/polygamist-leader-warren-jeffs#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs Is in Custody of Arizona Authorities to Face New Charges There"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}