Eldorado, Texas » A Texas judge will require the state to redact references to certain people and multiple marriages involving Raymond Merril Jessop from numerous documents it plans to use during his trial.

Attorneys spent two hours Tuesday in the courtroom, with no jury present, going through nearly 20 exhibits culled from a 10-inch high binder and deciding which would be admitted in full or part.

Defense attorney Mark Stevens argued that much of the content of the documents, mostly marriage records or dictations made by Warren S. Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, are extraneous, prejudicial and not relevant to the crime charged to Jessop because they refer to polygamy.

Jessop, 38, faces one count of sexual assault of a child. The state alleges he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl in 2004 to whom he was not legally married.

Prosecutor Eric Nichols told 51st Judge Barbara Walther the state plans to use the documents to show Jessop was not legally married to his alleged victim and that they both were in Texas at the time the claimed crime occurred.

Among the documents the defense wants kept out: Marriage records that show Jessop married several other women the same day he married the alleged victim.

Stevens said the defense had offered to stipulate to the fact that Jessop and the alleged victim were not legally married but Nichols

said Tuesday he would not do that because it might limit the evidence he plans to use.

Walther said she would allow use of the alleged victim's marriage record but did not immediately make a decision on the other records.

Among the documents the judge will admit is a dictation made by Jeffs that discusses the alleged victim being previously married to Raymond Jessop's brother -- a subject hinted at in the defense's questioning of a DNA expert.

The woman, now 21, was apparently married to Jessop's brother in November 2003 and then reassigned to Jessop in August 2004. She gave birth to a child in August 2005.

Other documents debated by the attorneys had titles such as "List of nursing and expectant mothers" and "Babies born at R17" -- a code name used by the FLDS for the Yearning For Zion Ranch, where the state alleges the sexual assault occurred.

Walther ruled in many instances that only portions of documents that reference Jessop and his alleged victim may be used, such as one dictation that describes her three-day labor in 2005 and another that talks about the naming of her child.

The description of the birth, Nichols said, is about the "very pregnancy that is the result of the sexual assault alleged in this case."

Walther also approved use of a 2007 photograph that shows Jessop sitting at a kitchen table with one young woman while the alleged victim hovers in the background.

Stevens had objected to it as extraneous and prejudicial because the jury will view it as evidence of a polygamous relationship, but Nichols said it depicts a relationship between Jessop and the "very victim in this case."