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Pueblo traffic stop at issue in court

Seth Jeffs accused of hiding brother who leads sect

Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 22, 2006 at midnight

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A Pueblo sheriff's deputy suspected within two minutes of stopping Seth Jeffs and his cousin in the wee hours of an October morning that something more was going on than erratic driving, he testified Tuesday.

Deputy Eric Medina said he first thought Jeffs' cousin might be driving under the influence of drugs, then became suspicious that the two men were smuggling narcotics or stolen audio equipment.

"I guarantee you, they're smugglers," Medina told fellow officers on a videotape of the traffic stop played in federal court Tuesday.

Jeffs is accused of hiding his fugitive brother, polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, from authorities.

Jeffs' lawyer, Daniel Smith, wants Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn to bar the government from using Jeffs' incriminating statements and items taken from his vehicle as evidence.

Smith contends that the Pueblo officers lacked legal grounds to arrest Jeffs and that they held him too long at the traffic stop site while awaiting the arrival of a drug-sniffing dog.

Blackburn said he will rule later.

Medina said he stopped the SUV after a citizen reported seeing the vehicle driving in the middle of the road. Medina watched the vehicle roll through a stop sign and then slow almost to a stop on state U.S. 50 just west of its intersection with Interstate 25. It was about 3 a.m. on Oct. 28.

Medina said the two men told conflicting stories about where they were going. The driver, Jeffs' cousin, Nathaniel Allred, eventually told him Jeffs had hired him to perform sexual favors for $5,000. Jeffs was arrested on charges of solicitation of prostitution and Allred on charges of prostitution.

After searching the SUV, authorities realized that Jeffs was related to Warren Jeffs.

Warren Jeffs is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist sect that split from the Mormon church in the 1890s after Mormons renounced polygamy.

Warren Jeffs is wanted in Arizona on charges of felony sexual abuse of a child for allegedly arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and an older married man in 2002.