Polygamous towns trial hinges on legacy of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs

• Government witnesses this week included relatives of imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs
• Witnesses described the hold Jeffs had on the church and twin towns after going to prison
• The trial resumes Monday.

The heading on the lawsuit says it's the United States against the bordering cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

But the trial, which finished its second week of testimony Thursday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, is about the polygamous sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and the paranoid, uber-controlled world created by its so-called prophet, Warren Jeffs, who is spending life in prison for having sex with the 12- and 15-year-old girls he took as brides.

Several witnesses took the stand Wednesday and Thursday to describe the hold Jeffs had on the FLDS and the twin towns even after going to prison.

The lawsuit, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, alleges the two towns and their shared public utilities are controlled by the church, violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which demands separation of church and state.The Justice Department also claims the towns violate the Civil Rights Act and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Bill of Rights because their shared police department enforces church orders, especially against residents who are not church members. The suit  alleges that the towns also violate the Fair Housing Act by delaying or denying water hookups to non-FLDS members.

The Justice Department hopes to gain injunctions against those practices, and seeks damages for people harmed by them.

The towns' defense attorneys, however, accuse the Justice Department of dwelling on Warren Jeffs, who has been in custody since 2006. The government and its witnesses contend he still had control over the church — and by extension, over the cities as well.

But times have changed, the defense attorneys insist, and they have battered witnesses with questions asking if current city officials and police are still under Jeffs' sway or if they are even FLDS members. The defense attorneys insist that such discrimination does not go on today.

Government witnesses insist that it does.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department played a video-recorded May 2014 deposition of Jeffs' younger brother Isaac, who visited the prophet in prison and may have been a conduit of control between the jailed leader and his followers. Over 40 minutes of video, Isaac Jeffs rhythmically invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, occasionally answering with an "I don't recall," or "I have heard of that."

Charlene Jeffs, the ex-wife of Warren Jeffs' brother Lyle, who still serves as a leader of the FLDS Church, also took the stand Wednesday to tell how she had been separated from her children and exiled to a trailer by the prophet for using the Internet. Her neighbor's son would slash her tires, and when she told his father she would call the town marshals, he smiled and told her that he had been assigned to the marshal's department himself.

Charlene's own children would refuse to talk to her if she saw them at a gas station, she said.

"I was shunned," she testified. "They would look the other way."

She filed for divorce, then sued for custody. And though defense attorneys denied that such things still happen, she claimed that a friend who served on the marshal's force came to her state-court custody hearing in full uniform, saying he had been sent by the church.

Justice Department attorneys also put on the stand Texas Ranger Nick Hanna, who had been the case agent on Warren Jeffs' sexual-assault trial in Texas.

Hanna described breaking into two church vaults on a remote FLDS sanctuary in Texas in 2008, two years after Jeffs had been arrested in Nevada and had been bounced and extradited through the Utah, Arizona and Texas justice systems.

In the vaults, law enforcement discovered countless documents in which the prophet chronicled every thought, sermon, letter and conversation he had, even while a fugitive from the FBI and at least three state police forces.

The micro-detail was mind-boggling: Jeffs set church and municipal policy, announced "the Lord's" appointments to city posts, separated FLDS members from their families, even ordered one mayor who fell into disfavor to move with his son to Fargo, N.D., to atone for his sins.

The defense asked Hanna if he would agree that the man moved to Fargo of his own accord. Hanna raised his eyebrows and said, "Under duress."

One damning correspondence between Jeffs and his brother Lyle addressed Lyle's concern as to whether he should consummate his marriage to a 16-year-old.

Warren Jeffs' response: "There are no underage priesthood marriages."

Lyle Jeffs' son Thomas testified Thursday, detailing his years with church security and describing how FLDS members would pledge $1,000 a month to help Jeffs stay on the lam, buying "places of refuge" and "houses of hiding."

Thomas Jeffs claimed that the FLDS would send $280,000 to $300,000 to Warren Jeffs every week.

"We would put the cash and the letters (from FLDS members) in a big manila envelope and take them to Warren," Thomas said.

After another Jeffs brother was pulled over by police in Colorado while transporting money to Warren Jeffs, the church began concealing the money in food cans that they would open, pack and reseal, Thomas said.

When Jeffs was apprehended in August 2006, he was driving a red 2007 Cadillac Escalade.

The last witness Thursday was Guy Timpson, who had served on church security and continued on the towns' utility board even after he left the church. He left the FLDS because of "interviews" conducted by church elders with his little girls, he said.

Timpson said that after a sermon by Warren Jeffs, the utility board stopped issuing water hookups for new construction by non-FLDS residents, claiming there was a water shortage, even while they were allowing hookups for church projects, including a spring-water bottling company.

Timpson will be back on the stand when trial resumes Monday.