US polygamist leader's trial starts in Texas

His followers call him a prophet who is God's spokesman on Earth. Prosecutors say he's a bigamist who sexually assaulted two underage girls he duped into "spiritual marriages."

Whether he's a holy man or a criminal, it's hard to find many people who don't have an opinion on Warren Jeffs in this remote, cotton-growing corner of West Texas oil and gas country.

And that was the main challenge as jury selection started Monday in the case of the 55-year-old ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of the Mormon church that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven - and should be protected under U.S. religious freedoms.

"I would imagine that they would want to transfer it to the moon where you might have a chance that no one would have heard of it," said Patrick Metze, a criminal law professor at Texas Tech University.

Jeffs is charged with sexual assault of one child and aggravated sexual assault of another. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted and will be tried separately on bigamy charges in October.

The accusations stem from an April 2008 police raid on a church compound known as Yearning For Zion outside the town of Eldorado, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of San Angelo. Authorities who believed girls were being forced into polygamous marriages removed more than 400 children living at the compound, and TV images of women wearing frontier-style dresses and 19th century hairdos were shown across the country.

The original call to a Texas domestic abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax - authorities suspect that a woman in her 30s living in Colorado made it. Most of the children seized from the ranch have since been returned to their families, but the evidence collected during the raid proved enough to charge Jeffs and 11 other church men with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy.

So far, all seven who have gone to trial have been convicted, receiving sentences of six to 75 years in prison.

Jeffs' church has its traditional headquarters along the Utah-Arizona border, and Jeffs was convicted as an accomplice to rape in Utah in 2007, though that ruling was overturned by the state supreme court.

He was extradited to Texas in December. Seized at the Yearning For Zion ranch were hundreds of pages of personal journals compiled since Jeffs took over as head of the church from his father in 2002.

Tall and lanky with thick glasses, a chained and shackled Jeffs has made numerous appearances in Walther's court but said little - preferring to mostly stare at the floor. Church faithful rise when he enters. On Monday, he wore a dark suit and spent part of the hearing for a delay with his head bowed and his eyes mostly closed, as if he were praying.

Jeffs is backed by a church land trust with more than $110 million in property and has retained seven attorneys since December. They have said little about what kind of defense he will mount.

The Texas attorney general's office is handling the case and has also refused to comment on its strategy. Past FLDS cases have relied on documents from Yearning For Zion, though, as well as DNA evidence.