Attorneys spent more than two hours hammering out an agreement that puts on hold a custody hearing for the newborn son of Louisa Bradshaw Jessop, 22, pending the high court's ruling. The state also agreed to let Jessop's two older children join their mother - something a different judge requested a week ago during a status hearing for the children.
"I'm one step closer to my family being together," said father Dan Jessop, 24, outside the courthouse. "I'm trying to have faith in the government. It's pretty rough right now. We're working hard at it."
The Texas Supreme Court, which worked informally through the weekend, could act as soon as today, said Osler McCarthy, a staff attorney for the court.
Status hearings for other FLDS children scheduled for Tuesday and today were canceled, leaving attorneys across the state in limbo about their next moves.
Outside the Tom Green County Courthouse, Jessop said he feels "like this [agreement] is a good thing." But as far as the continued separation from his children, "I don't like it a bit," he said.
Louisa Jessop and her infant Richard Daniel, born May 12, have been kept separately from two older siblings under provisions of a court order that allowed mothers to stay only with children under age 1.
Three-year-old Amber and 1-year-old Rulan Frederick are in a facility in Austin, but will join their mother and brother in San Antonio, under the deal signed by Tom Green County Judge Barbara Walther.
On Friday, the first day of the hearing, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services introduced stunning photos of sect leader Warren S. Jeffs giving a husbandly kiss to a 12-year-old girl whom he married in July 2006.
The girl was brought to the courthouse Tuesday as a potential witness but did not have to testify as a result of the deal.
The state, however, entered two documents as evidence: A 2003 marriage record for the Jessops and a second 2006 marriage record that was sealed by the court.
DFPS attorney Ellen Griffith had argued on Friday that the Jessops are part of a household at the ranch that condones underage marriages and a communal lifestyle. The girl lives in the same building as the couple, Tuesday's deal notes.
Outside court Tuesday, FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said the photographs have nothing to do with the Jessops. "Each parent of each family is entitled to stand on their own," he said. "It was just an effort by CPS to try and get publicity."
The Texas Supreme Court is weighing a request from DFPS that it freeze a Third Court of Appeals ruling requiring Walther to vacate her order that kept the FLDS children in custody. That ruling said the state's case lacked sufficient evidence to justify keeping all the children.
In a filing Tuesday, DFPS reiterated its concerns that families may leave the state if they are reunited, and that it could not match children to their parents without genetic test results. Without a stay, "approximately 124 children will be returned to alleged mothers without any male sexual perpetrators being identified," state attorneys wrote.
But attorneys representing FLDS parents argue that the recent reunion of 12 children with their families "undermines the department's insistence that every single child is in imminent danger of abuse because of the parents beliefs," according to a new filing.
The children's release also contradicts the state's claim that it can not match children and parents until DNA test results are in hand, expected by mid-June, the attorneys responded.
Legal aid firms filed the two petitions granted by the appeals court on behalf of 41 mothers, but have said the rulings' legal reasoning applies to all of the approximately 450 children taken from parents at the YFZ Ranch.
brooke@sltrib.com
jlyon@sltrib.com
About 450 children were taken from the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, between April 3-5. The ranch is home to members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
