Fundamentalist Mormon Sentenced to 75 Years in Prison

You Americans know how to set down a sentence.
Over here in Blighty, he would have gotten a 2 day gaol sentence, suspended for 3 hours and a fine of 2 pints of milk and a mars bar.

Did I over do the irony about low sentences in England?

Serious point, regarding the $10K fine, does it go to state/federal coffers, or do the victims get some of the money?

I was about to write a comment saying that even with all the special treatment religion gets, even the religious draw the line at child rape, but then I paused.

In another tab I had the news that the Pope was “apologizing” to all the beaten and raped children of Ireland. The article mentioned that in no place did he take any personal responsibility for his orders of secrecy and cover-up or that these men who raped children were going to be punished. Of course no government officials of any country was even suggesting that the Catholic Church be looked into given its, you know, pattern of raping children.

So I’m glad this man was convicted and thrown in jail, but I can’t say that child rape is bad enough to supercede the special treatment of religion. Jessop made the mistake of raping a girl in a minority religion. If he were father Jessop and instead of a 15 year old girl it was several 10 year old boys, he’d be given therapy and maybe 6 months prison, then given his old job at another parish.

Hurley described the way that Jessop was called to marry the girl, being called in after work to appear before the former FLDS leader and his father and being married with about half an hour notice.

“Was it his free choice to do that that evening?”

It’s one thing to give every accused person the best possible defense. But given that the man fathered a child on this woman, it’s clear that Hurley is well over the line; he has gone far beyond offering the best possible defense, and become a rape-apologist.

75 years in jail is good to here. Now if he hadn’t have married her or fathered a child with her – if it was just one count of sexual assault – what would the sentence be?

Here in Canada, it would likely be no more than 2 years, which is sick. You can’t rehabilitate anyone within that length of time. And for the ones that are high-risk to reoffend and impossible to rehabilitate, that’s far too short of a sentencing to protect society.

While he clearly deserves a stiff jail sentence, I have to say that a life sentence (which is what this is in all but name) is ludicrously excessive. But ludicrous excess seems to be considered normal in the US.

Re rehabilitation: Bear in mind that this guy is probably not a pedophile (or similar recognized sexual-compulsion disorder). His crime was enabled by his being emebedded in a culture that normalizes young brides under compulsion (as did our own culture, not so many centuries ago). What that means for rehab, I don’t know — but if I’m right, he likely wouldn’t be a hazard to re-offend if released into the larger society (though back home — yeah, probably).

Also, I agree with “a thought” above: if the guy was a Baptist, I bet he’d have got off more lightly.

A little background for anyone that’s interested:

Normally sexual assault of a minor is a 2nd degree felony with a punishment of 2 to 20 years.

Texas added a provision that if you sexually assault a minor while proporting to marry them then the degree of crime is raised to a first degree felony where the punishment is 5 to 99 years.

This guy was wholly unrepentant, he came in to court on the first day wearing an American flag tie. They honestly believe that freedom of religion means being able to have sex with girls as young as 12.

So far Texas has sentenced 4 of these yo-yos. (6 are awaiting trial.) One guy plead to 7 years. One was given 10 years by a jury. (Both of those were 2nd degree felony cases) On the two first degree felony cases one got 33 years and the latest got 75 years.

@minneyar

You’d really have to understand just how vile this cult is to get a context of why the jury gave the guy 75 years.

The girl in this case was told 30 minutes before hand that she was now at age 15 going to become a baby factory for a man over twice her age.

There is no such thing as love, or courtship or any of the other things most normal folks would think was involved.

Girls as young as age 12 are assigned as concubines/sex slaves/baby factories to these men. Why? By having multiple wives and producing unsupportable numbers of children their theology teaches that they will become Gods in the afterlife.

In this particular case, one of the pieces of evidence was a letter by the defendant to their “prophet.” Basically the letter said, “hey she’s 15 and just got out of eighth grade (the girl is a bit developmentally delayed) can I make her stay home to help take care of the other kids.”

Hopefully now it will make a little more sense.

@ed42

I think the jury verdict is for a deterrent effect rather than for victim’s reparations.

However, now that there is a conviction, the victim is available for services.

@Godless Monster: I didn’t say he wasn’t to blame, and doesn’t deserve serious time. I only commented on the causal context of his behaviour, and that it likely differs from that found in typical cases in the outside world.

Seeing as he lied about the girl being 18, one of two things must be true: 1) he really thought she was 18, or 2) he does acknowledge wrong-doing in having sex with a minor. In any event, the forced nature of it seems more appalling that the age disparity, no?

Hemant: Even worse than how he impregnated an underage girl is how he lied about it

I’m sure the girl would agree.

Ron in Houston: You’d really have to understand just how vile this cult is to get a context of why the jury gave the guy 75 years.

Nah, once I heard “Texas” I understood exactly why they’d imprison him for 75 years. Unless of course he was not white or not mentally competent to stand trial, in which case I’m surprised that they didn’t lynch him.

polomint38: Serious point, regarding the $10K fine, does it go to state/federal coffers, or do the victims get some of the money?

No, the money goes to the government. The victim, on the other hand, gets to pay the taxes to keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life.

ed42: Looks like there is nothing for the victim in the verdict, how can that be justice?

This is basically the case whenever anyone is imprisoned (except possibly for short term incarceration awaiting a trial or a drunk-tank-like incarceration during a “cooling off” period). Historically, the foundations of justice in the Western common law tradition have been restitution and compensation. Our modern deviations from the common law system come from attempts by the English kings starting in the 11th century to bring the dispensation of justice under their hands, starting by instituting a system of travelling royal judges (this is where “circuit court” comes from) and ending with forcing people to travel to the king to get certain types of disagreements resolved (which was a major issue in the pre-Revolutionary War period). The kings, of course, had no interest in restitution or compensation for the victims, since there was already a system in place that provided that and they were explicitly attacking that system. Rather, they saw the courts as a way of enforcing the loyalty of the subjects (since justice would be based on the will of the king rather than a common understanding of law) and of generating revenue (by taking compensation previously due victims for the crown instead). The U.S. system was partially a reaction against the most egregious abuses of the royal justice system, which is why the Constitution and U.S. law have certain restrictions like habeas corpus and a requirement that crimes be tried in the district in which they occurred (although Obama’s policy regarding Gitmo trials seems likely to end both of these restrictions), but maintained certain features of the royal system that the central state found convenient, such as a focus on maintaining order as opposed to upholding common law and the payment of fines to the government instead of to victims. So, you are correct, just like all other trials conducted in the United States, this had absolutely nothing to do with justice; it was entirely an attempt to promote the strength and interests of the state apparatus. (This, of course, is not to say that the attacker is not guilty, just that justice couldn’t possibly have been served given the jurisdiction in which the crime was tried.)

The royal system, incidentally, is what gave us prisons. Up to that point, people seemed capable of doing a good job of providing justice and providing for their safety without the need to lock people up for 75 years, let alone keep more than 1% of the population in cages, despite there being dangerous criminals back then too. We have prisons now not because we need them, but because they serve the interests of the ruling elite and because the ruling class has tricked the rest of us into accepting them. Saying that someone deserves to be imprisoned for 75 years show an unbelievable amorality, no matter what crime that someone committed.

TheGodlessMonster: If the death penalty was viable and applied fairly, I’d be pushing for that penalty on dirt-bags like this. … Oh, it’s great to have “liberal” and progressive” mores when you are assured the consequences of those so-called values don’t creep up and bite you in the ass. … I’m not willing to give a few pseudo-intellectual snobs free reign to run their sociological experiments [to rehabilitate criminals rather than throw away the key] on the rest of us in the name of cultural diversity.

This line of thinking is fairly typical of the conservative judicial tradition (basically, an extension of the royalist system I mentioned above): more concern with social order than with justice, although its proponents still have the nerve to call it a justice system. It begins with an implicit emotional reaction (“dirt-bags,” “terrorists,” etc.) and then calls for the most egregious penalty that the speaker can imagine (death penalty, life in prison, barbaric forms of torture) and attacks any dissent using standard meaningless conservative buzzwords (“liberals,” “judicial activism,” “cultural diversity,” etc.). No, we can’t uphold libertarian values like proportionality of response, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, etc., because that means we may sometimes make a mistake and “the consequences of those so-called values don’t creep up and bite you in the ass.”

But the problem with this legal “philosophy” (beyond the fact that it’s inherently immoral and arbitrary) is that it has no self-contained limits. Once you start moving away from libertarian principles of justice like “it’s better to let 100 guilty persons go than to accidentally condemn one innocent person,” the principle of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt slowly erodes to “it’s better to condemn 100 innocent persons than to let one guilty person go,” to “why not survey everyone; surely only the guilty have reason to complain,” to some unimaginable police state (“unimaginable” to those who haven’t lived in one). I don’t normally make slippery slope arguments, but I feel a bit safer doing so here, as this is a slope we’ve seen in practice in just about every totalitarian society that has ever existed. As a (mostly) free people who’d like to stay (mostly) free, it’s important that we eternally condemn conservative justice and instead remember that justice was instituted to serve the people, not the state.

@aj

I really appreciate what you have to say, especially since you’ve met ole Merril Leroy.

I seriously sensed that the guy who got 33 years, Allen Keate had a serious WTF moment.

When you’ve let your reality be defined by those around for years and years and you suddenly find out that it was all a lie, well, then you’re going to have some serious cognitive dissonance.

It’s sort of like when those of use who were taught to believe in Santa Claus suddenly found it he didn’t exist only probably magnified many more times.

@Ron

I’m just saying the sentence is excessive. That’s all. Take religion out of it for a moment. That guy could have shot a fifteen year old girl in the brain and been out in 25 years with good behavior.

I think this is great. I have a (weird) love of books about the FLDS Mormons, and Jessops are awful, awful people. They are also, as a group, powerful. The only downside is that this will feed the FLDS martyr complex and convince another generation that they need to fear the police… maybe this isn’t for the best? The problem is complex, that is for sure. But sexual consent in these communities is near zero. Elissa Wall wrote about how it is standard practice to offer a girl less than 48 hours to prepare for her wedding to her assigned (older man/ already married/ somehow related to her) husband. They are all brainwashed with the threat of damnation and separation from family, so I can’t see these poor girls as making an informed choice.

I’m glad that the criminal justice system is recognizing a pattern of abuse in the FLDS and punishing perpetrators accordingly. I personally have no qualms with a 75 year prison sentence for a child-rapist.

The FLDS is a very pathological religion, and more accounts of abuse are surfacing. I recommend the following books for a deeper understanding of the FLDS:

– ESCAPE by Carolyn Jessop

– CHURCH OF LIES by Flora Jessop

– STOLEN INNOCENSE by Elissa Wall (who was central to the Warren Jeffs criminal case)

– LOST BOY by Brent W. Jeffs

– UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: A STORY OF VIOLENT FAITH by Jon Krakauer

– THE PRIMER by the Utah and Arizona Attorney Generals’ offices
http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/cmsdocuments/The_Primer.pdf