Prosecutors charged that the 55-year-old sect leader sexually assaulted two girls, ages 12 and 15, by arranging illegal marriages under the guise of his religious beliefs.
Prosecutors also played an audio recording of Jeffs allegedly engaging in sexual intercourse with the 12-year-old. The recording was seized when Jeffs was arrested in 2006.
Jeffs is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS). Jeffs is believed to have 78 wives, 24 of them under age 17, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors also showed jurors a page from one of Jeffs’s personal journals. Jeffs boycotted most of the penalty phase of his trial. Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for his assault on the 12-year-old. A jury in Texas Tuesday sentenced polygamist leader Warren Jeffs to life in prison for sexually assaulting children.
Other recordings captured Jeffs instructing what prosecutors say were underage girls in how to please him. Brent Jeffs, 28, told jurors that his uncle raped him when he was 5 years old.
Prosecutors said the 14-year-old was Jeffs' "spiritual wife" and conceived a child with Jeffs when she was 15.