Font ResizeA week after announcing plans to hold the oral arguments in polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs' appeal at Brigham Young University, the Utah Supreme Court has reversed itself.
The court will now hear the case at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City, a venue that will accommodate the high interest in the case, a court spokeswoman said Thursday. Nancy Volmer said a new date to hear the appeal will be set next week.
The decision to hear the appeal at BYU, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, surprised members of the FLDS, who were concerned enough to seek views about it from their attorneys.
"We had asked our attorneys whether it was a good or bad [setting] but we had not made any conclusions on it," said Willie Jessop, spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
He added: "We don't have a problem with it being held at BYU if Brigham Young is making the decision, but there may be more than him influencing the decision."
The LDS Church abandoned the practice of plural marriage in 1890 and has distanced itself from sects such as the FLDS that continue to engage in it.
But that apparently had nothing to do with the decision to hear Jeffs' case at the university, nor the court's decision to relocate it.
Like Jeffs' 2007 trial, Volmer said the court expects the appeal hearing will attract lots of media and observers. Attorneys also had requested as
The state supreme court visits BYU's J. Reuben Clark School of Law every fall to hear cases then travels in the spring to the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah for the same purpose.
Doing so provides "an opportunity for mainly the students to be able to observe oral arguments," Volmer said. "It is an outreach effort the court does."
The court selects cases to hear at the universities that are on the docket and "something that would be of interest to students," she said, criteria the Jeffs case met.
Jeffs, who has led the FLDS church since 2002, is appealing his conviction on charges of being an accomplice to rape for a marriage he conducted in 2001 between Elissa Wall and Allen Steed. Wall, who was 14 at the time, objected to the marriage to Steed, then 19.
Jeffs, awaiting trial in Arizona on similar charges, is serving two consecutive five-to-life sentences.
Salt Lake lawyer Walter Bugden, who is representing Jeffs in the Utah case, did not return a telephone call from The Salt Lake Tribune .
The BYU docket
Warren Jeffs' appeal would not have been the first involving polygamy to be heard at Brigham Young University. In 2005, the Utah Supreme Court heard arguments that led to removal of FLDS member Walter Steed from his post as Hildale's Justice of the Peace because of his plural marriages.
Other recent cases it has heard at BYU involved a death sentence appeal, a ban on nude dancing and an appeal brought by a man whose driver license was revoked for intoxication in a traffic stop later ruled unconstitutional.
"The cases are chosen by the court based on their educational merit," said Scott Cameron, associate dean at the J. Reuben Clark Law School. "We're grateful for the opportunity our law students have to have a first-hand look at the legal system."
