Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs loses phone

Texas prison officials have found polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs guilty of "a major disciplinary infraction" following an investigation into whether he violated policy by -- among other things -- preaching a Christmas day sermon from prison, a state spokeswoman said Monday.
Jeffs' phone privileges have been suspended for 90 days, added Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons.
While refusing to elaborate on the content of the conversations, Lyons said that Jeffs was found guilty of making conference calls on several occasions. "It was obvious to us he was talking to a group of people," she said.
The leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jeffs is serving a life-plus-20-year term in Texas for sexual assault. He was convicted last August of the aggravated sexual assaults of a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl that Jeffs claimed were his "spiritual wives."
The state criminal justice department announced in late December that it had initiated an investigation into allegations that Jeffs used a prison phone to preach to his congregation on Christmas.
Records show that Jeffs made two phone calls on December 25, said Jason Clark, a Criminal Justice Department spokesman.
"It would be a violation of the rules if the person called were to place the call on speaker phone or record the conversation. The Office of Inspector General has asked us to suspend the accounts of certain individuals on his calling list while they continue to investigate," Clark said. He declined to identify those people.


Authorities didn't say how they found out about the improper calls, but have said previously that except for calls between inmates and their lawyers, calls made through the inmate telephone system are monitored and recorded.


Jeffs is serving a life sentence plus 20 years for sexually assaulting two of his underage brides. The charges followed a 2008 raid on a West Texas ranch where followers of his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints live. Former church members have said since his conviction last year that Jeffs would continue to try to lead his Utah-based church from prison, since followers revere him.


He's held in protective custody, isolated from other inmates at the Powledge Unit prison near Palestine, about 140 miles north of Houston. Inmates are allowed up to 10 people on their phone list, and prison officials say those people are told the calls must be to a land line, not a mobile phone, and also must be to an individual caller and not be made available to a wider audience.


Jeffs was found to have committed a major disciplinary violation by breaking a posted inmate rule. Lyons said if Jeffs, who has no lawyer, violated phone rules again after phone privileges were restored in three months, the violation again would go through the disciplinary process. She wasn't sure if a penalty then would be more harsh.