Font ResizeEldorado, Texas » A Schleicher County jury is deliberating what penalty to give FLDS member Raymond Merril Jessop.
Jurors went into the waiting room just before noon after hearing 30 minute-long closing arguments from attorneys for the state and the defense.
Prosecutors asked the jury to give Jessop, 38, the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 2004. The defense asked for a maximum of 10 years with probation.
Prosecutor Angela Goodwin told the jury they had the power to send a strong message with their verdict and deter others "in the community, in the country, who might think about coming to Schleicher County" and committing a similar crime.
Probation would amount to a "get-out-of-jail-free card wrapped up in a bow."
The sect contends it follows the laws of God, Goodwin said. She held up a Texas code book in front of the jury and said, "These are the laws of man. These are the laws that need to be followed."
Goodwin showed a photo of Jessop sitting at a kitchen table, a new 15-year-old wife by his side as his victim stood shadowed in the background.
"By your verdict you'll be able to bring a voice to that lady who is standing in the shadows there," Goodwin said.
Defense attorney Mark Stevens reminded jurors that they had said three weeks ago they were open to the possibility of probation for Jessop and urged them to
He told them that while they had found Jessop guilty, a verdict the defense would not quarrel with, the state had not provided a single bit of evidence that the crime was one of sexual violence, or that Jessop "harmed a single hair" on anyone's head.
He repeated what four residents who had hired Jessop to work on their homes had said about him: That he was a "good man, extremely truthful, honest and helpful."
Even the former FLDS members who testified had nothing bad to say specifically about Jessop, he said.
"Where are their witnesses that would justify something like" sending Jessop to prison for 20 years, Stevens asked.
A predator who preys on little children might deserve 20 years, but not Jessop, who wasn't "hanging around school yards, preying on little children."
Four years ago, he reminded them, it was legal for a girl the age of Jessop's victim to marry with parental permission.
"What evidence did they present to you that this wasn't consensual," he asked.
Giving Jessop probation would place him under the supervision of 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, who Stevens described as "not a soft touch. Judge Walther can be trusted to supervised this case."
Stevens, and later defense attorney Brandon Hudson, asked the jury to not punish Jessop for what others said or his unpopular religion.
"They want you to go back in that room and put a big, fat rubber stamp on what they did," Hudson said, referring to the April 2008 investigation at the sect's Yearning For Zion Ranch.
That investigation led to the charges against Jessop and 11 other men. Ask yourselves, Hudson said, "What do you think is right for Raymond, not for anyone else, for Raymond, the dad."
Prosecutor Eric Nichols closed the arguments by making a passionate plea for the jurors to be tough as they recalled all the evidence they heard over the past two weeks.
They had been able, he said, to go beyond the sect's locked gates, down the long road into the ranch, into homes and the secret Temple vault.
"You are not in a position to avert your eyes or close your ears to what you have seen" and heard in the case, he said.
The state had shown by Jessop's actions and by his position that he was not a person who would abide by probation conditions, Nichols said, and asked that they stand "strong and firm and by your verdict, which is the only way you can communicate with Raymond Jessop, that you can look him in the eye and say, 'No sir, we will not turn a blind eye' " -- a refrain he repeated before suggesting the jury tell Jessop this:
"No sir, Mr. Jessop, we have seen, we have listened, we haven't closed our eyes and now Mr. Jessop, it is time for you to listen."
