UPDATE WEDNESDAY MARCH 28: Jury resumed deliberations today and delivered a guilty verdict for Wendell Nielsen on three counts of bigamy.
According to KRTS Correspondent Steve Anderson, it was "an extraordinary technical legal argument" that the state used successfully against the defense.
For several years, KRTS News has covered the trials stemming from the state's 2008 raid of the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, belonging to a religious sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS). The accusations have ranged from the sexual assault of children to charges of bigamy.
A bigamy trial began today (Thursday, March 22) for Wendell Nielsen, once a close associate of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who is now serving a life term for the sexual assault of a child at his church’s Texas compound. The Nielsen trial is being held in Midland, and is being covered by KRTS Legal Correspondent, Steve Anderson.
Nielsen was once president of the FLDS, but was reportedly excommunicated by Jeffs in 2011. In his opening statement for the defense, it was admitted that Nielsen had three "celestial marriages," but argued they didn’t violate Texas law because they didn’t purport to be actual, legal marriages.