Polygamist Warren Jeffs jailed for life for sex assault

Warren Jeffs, the former sect leader convicted by a Texas jury of sexually assaulting two girls, ages 12 and 15, whom he'd taken as brides in "spiritual marriages," was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday.

Jeffs, 55, the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, received the maximum sentence on both counts from the Texas jury, deliberated less than half an hour, CBS reports.

During the trial, prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old; they also played an audio recording of what they said was him forcing a 12-year-old girl to have sex with him.

Jeffs, who according to the Salt Lake Tribune has 78 wives, 24 of them under the age of 17, taught that polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. His 10,000 or more followers — members of a sect that is part of a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism — consider him God's spokesman on Earth.

Prosecutors rejected the contention by Jeffs, who represented himself in the trial, that he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs.

According to CBS, Jeffs:

broke his courtroom silence with an objection marked by a nearly hourlong speech defending polygamy, and twice threatened the judge and the court with warnings of punishment from God.

The charges had stemmed from a 2008 police raid on the FLDS' walled Texas ranch, finding underage girls who were clearly pregnant and "women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century," CBS reports. 

Jeffs spent years evading arrest, the Wall Street Journal reports, "crisscrossing the country as a fugitive who eventually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted list before his capture in 2006."

Eleven other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy: The seven who have been tried were convicted, jailed for between six and 75 years.

(GlobalPost reports: New details on life in Warren Jeffs' polygamist compound)