 "Photo: Harry Cabluck/The Associated Press")
ELDORADO, Texas — More than 150 potential jurors, including 10 women with prairie dresses and braids, crammed into a makeshift courtroom Monday as jury selection began in the first criminal trial stemming from the raid of a polygamist sect’s ranch last year.
Raymond Jessop, 38, is charged with sexual assault of a child, stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl.
The girl, according to church documents seized by authorities, gave birth at age 16 at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. If convicted, Jessop faces 20 years in prison.
He is also charged with bigamy, but that charge is to be tried separately.
Potential jurors for what would be Schleicher County’s first jury trial in more than a decade spent Monday on plastic folding chairs in a building next to the courthouse. A few were dismissed with early exemption claims, but 17 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints remained.
The county sent summonses to 300 potential jurors, the largest jury pool in its history, in hopes of seating 12 jurors and two alternates — a task that could be a challenge in a small county that became international news with the raid last April.
Authorities took 439 FLDS children into state custody and conducted a weeklong raid at the ranch, confiscating hundreds of boxes of documents and photos.
Jessop’s trial is expected to last two weeks, said Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols, who is prosecuting the case.
The prosecution’s witness list includes 59 people, including law enforcement and child welfare officials, two of Jessop’s alleged underage wives and former FLDS members.
Authorities have said little publicly about the charge against Jessop, but documents seized from the ranch indicate the assault charge stems from his alleged relationship with a girl who was in labor for several days in August 2005.
Under Texas law, generally, no one under 17 can consent to sex with an adult.
Sect members, who believe polygamy brings glorification in heaven, historically have lived around the Arizona-Utah line, but the sect bought a ranch on the outskirts of Eldorado about six years ago. Hundreds of FLDS members have returned to the log cabin-style homes there.
The FLDS is a breakaway sect not recognized by the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
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