Grand jury may study FLDS case next week

A grand jury is scheduled to meet in Eldorado, Texas, next week and could begin considering evidence from the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch.

The Eldorado Success newspaper reported Wednesday that the Schleicher County grand jury is expected to begin considering the first criminal cases that could come from the April 3 raid.

The Texas Attorney General's Office declined to comment on any proceedings.

"In Texas, grand jury proceedings are secret proceedings by law," attorney general's spokesman Jerry Strickland said in an e-mail Wednesday to the Deseret News. "We can not and will not comment on such issues."

The grand jury last met on June 2, when 18 indictments were handed down — none of them related to the YFZ Ranch. The attorney general's office has been appointed as a special prosecutor to handle any criminal cases coming out of the raid. Texas authorities seized approximately 1,000 boxes of evidence during their raid on the YFZ Ranch.

Recently, the Utah Department of Health was asked to provide birth certificates of specific people within the FLDS Church. The request was made by Gary Engels, a special investigator for the Mohave County, Ariz., Attorney's Office, which has prosecuted FLDS members in the past for underage marriages and has a case pending against sect leader Warren Jeffs.

"He had a spreadsheet of names of couples, presumably from the Texas community, I believe," said Jeff Duncan, the director of Utah's Office of Vital Records and Statistics.

Duncan told the Deseret News that no children's birth certificates were requested.

"In every instance, it was a couple," he said.

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com

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