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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A Utah judge has refused to dismiss a rape charge filed against a man whose 2001 spiritual marriage was the basis for a criminal case involving polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs.
Allen Steed was charged with rape by Washington County prosecutors in September 2007 -- one day after a jury found Jeffs guilty of two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in Steed's 2001 marriage to Elissa Wall.
Both Steed and Wall, who are cousins, were members of Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Jeffs performed the couple's religious marriage ceremony and later counseled them.
In court papers, Steed's defense attorney Jim Bradshaw had argued prosecutors waited more than six years to file the charges and that the statute of limitations had expired.
Washington County prosecutors, however, said a 2005 change in Utah law gave them up to eight years from the time the alleged crime occurred to file charges.
The two sides also disagreed about whether handwritten notes by Mohave County, Ariz., investigator Gary Engels in 2005 about Wall's alleged sexual assault constituted a "report" of the crime to law enforcement.
Engles passed the information gathered during an impromptu meeting with Lamont Barlow, Wall's husband in 2005, to county prosecutors.
In the ruling filed Sept. 9, 5th District Judge James Beacham sided with prosecutors and said Engles notes, while not complete, and the fact that Barlow believed he was talking to a law enforcement officer met the legal standard for a report.
"It is clear that Mr. Engels did receive a sufficient report of 'what was done and who did it,"' Beacham wrote.
On Tuesday, Bradshaw said he will ask the court for a hearing to challenge the specific facts -- what Engles was told, and how and when he communicated the information to prosecutors.
Steed was 19 and Wall 14, when FLDS church leaders, in keeping with the faith's customs, arranged their marriage in 2001. The union ended in an FLDS divorce, known as a release, in 2004 after Wall became pregnant with Barlow's child.
Prosecutors used the marriage as the basis for filing criminal charges of rape as an accomplice against Jeffs in 2006. A St. George jury convicted the church leader the next year, and he was sentenced to two prison terms of five years to life.
During the trial, Wall said she objected to the marriage and was forced into sex.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people who say they were sexually assaulted, but Wall has spoken publicly and published a nationally distributed book about her life in the FLDS church and the case.
Steed testified on Jeffs' behalf, saying his sexual relationship with Wall was never forced.
The Utah Supreme Court overturned the convictions in July, saying faulty jury instructions denied Jeffs a fair trial. A decision about a retrial of the the Jeffs case by prosecutors is still pending.
Jeffs remains incarcerated in Utah and is fighting a warrant for his extradition to face criminal charges in Texas. Authorities there have charged him with bigamy, aggravated sexual assault and assault charges for alleged incidents involving underage girls at a church ranch near Eldorado.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
