El Dorado, Texas » A state prosecutor told jurors Thursday that the best evidence that Raymond Merril Jessop is guilty of sexual assault is the little girl whose face was projected on a screen as they listened to his closing argument.

The child is the "snow on the ground, the pools of water on the ground, that represents the terrible crime of sexual assault," Eric Nichols told the seven men and five women on the jury.

But defense attorney Mark Stevens countered that the jury never heard or saw evidence that Jessop was in Schleicher County at the time the alleged crime occurred.

Stevens said the state did not provide a single "live witness" to testify that Jessop was in the county at the time of the alleged crime or even when they raided the ranch four years later.

"This is a paper case," he said.

Nichols, Stevens and defense attorney Brandon T. Hudson finished their closing statements to the jury at 4:05 p.m., ending a trial that opened seven days ago. The jury immediately left the courtroom to begin deliberations.

Jessop, 38, faces one count of sexual assault of a child, punishable by 2 to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The state alleges that on Aug. 12, 2004, Jessop spiritually married the teenager at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. He was 33 at the time. The state says the 16-year-old became pregnant with his child on or about Nov. 19, 2004.

The

state relied heavily on documents seized from the ranch, home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in April 2008.

Nichols recounted the evidence the jury heard from DNA experts, law officers and a former FLDS member and said it proves that a sexual assault occurred.

Documents and evidence taken from the ranch corroborate a DNA test that left no doubt that Jessop is the child's father, Nichols said.

"Common sense, common experience," shows a time frame for the alleged crime happened nine months earlier, he said.

Nichols, who addressed the jury first, also said the state did not have to prove an exact date, only that the crime occurred before Jessop was indicted in July 2008 and before a 10-year statute of limitations, beginning when the alleged victim turned 18, expired. The alleged victim is now 21.

"Any act of sexual assault is a horrendous crime," Nichols said. "But an act of sexual assault of a child is of such an extreme nature . . . we don't even consider whether the victim, being a child, was able to consent."

Stevens reminded jurors of their assurance that anyone could get a fair trial in Schleicher County and asked them to not be swayed by "truckloads and truckloads" of evidence massed by the state.

"I told you it was going to be tough," he said. "I told you there were going to be a lot of things in this case that didn't have to do with sexual assault."

The state had the burden to prove its charge, he said, and they failed. The "most obvious" omission: That the alleged crime occurred in Schleicher County.

A state witness testified, Stevens said, about the ease of recovering electronic data but there wasn't a single cell phone record or computer record produced by Jessop himself in the state's evidence that might have shown where he was in November 2004. It also was unclear where some evidence came from, he said.

Stevens said there also is no evidence that Jessop ever saw, contributed to or commented on documents the state seized from a locked vault in a Temple Annex at the ranch.

"It's dangerous when we start trying to convict people on documents and we're not sure where the documents came from," he said.

"Can you guess a man into a guilty verdict?" he asked, then added that despite "this huge mass of documents, it is not proof of a crime."

Hudson addressed the jury briefly, urging them to let the facts, not emotion, guide them. He said dictations made by FLDS leader Warren S. Jeffs that were the crux of the state's case showed Jeffs traveling the United States.

"If he can travel, how do we know where Raymond is,?" Hudson asked.

The state did not offer as evidence any dictations from November 2004, when the crime is alleged to have happened, he told the jury.

"They didn't bring you what you need," Hudson said. "There is not one piece of evidence in that entire box, on all those computers, in that DNA [that tells you] where Raymond was."

Nichols spoke again to the jury after the defenses' statements, telling jurors it wasn't a paper case at all but one "based in flesh and blood" -- that of the child and her mother.

"Crimes that are committed behind locked metal gates and fences and walls are just the same kind of crimes that occur out on the street corner," Nichols said.

The important thing is that law officers are able to get whatever evidence they can to bring to jurors like them, he said.