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DENVER (AP) -- The younger brother of Warren Jeffs was sentenced to three years' probation today Friday for harboring a fugitive, saying he knew he was wrong in hampering the search for the polygamist sect leader.
Seth Steed Jeffs of Hildale, Utah, was fined 25-hundred dollars in addition to the probation. In a brief statement in court, Jeffs said he wants to live in Colorado and just get on with my life.
Prosecutor Phil Brimmer asked for a three-month prison term, saying it would serve as a better deterrent. U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn, however, said he found Jeffs to be contrite and praised him for trying to remove himself from the sect.
A Justice Department spokesman, Jeff Dorschner, said prosecutors considered the case a victory, though there has been no public indication that Seth Jeffs has provided guidance in finding his brother.
Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was indicted in June on an Arizona charge of arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a married man and on a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He is also charged in Utah with two first-degree felony counts of rape as an accomplice, for allegedly arranging the marriage of a teenage girl to an older man in Nevada.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
