This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Just got back to Salt Lake! I think I'll take a nap. Glad to be back to mere 85 to 90 degree temperatures, but I want to keep the word y'all. Also, I'll be calling everyone "sir" and "ma'am" for a while. Well, now that the Warren Jeffs trial has wrapped up, the court is beginning to release the evidence in the case. So far, some photos and all the audio have been made public. Court reporter Debbie Harris is working hard to scan in the rest (thank you Debbie!), and we're on the list to get it when it's done, maybe later this month.
I don't expect a transcript anytime soon, though I may post some of my notes on this blog. Is there anything in particular anyone would like some more detail about? If so, let me know in the comments. We are publishing some of the evidence, including parts that may be disturbing. (Here's selected audio from Jeffs' "training" to his wives and here are some pics of Jeffs on the run, disguised in a T-shirt.) I can tell you, we are keeping out the truly graphic stuff (I think I might need some therapy after some of the stuff we heard in court!)We are also editing to protect the victims' identities, like blurring out their faces in photos. It's our policy at the paper not to identify victims of sexual assault, and I feel very strongly it's also the right thing to do. Even though the girls' names and pictures were used in court, I try to refer to them by their ages as much as possible in public. I really feel like it's important to protect their privacy as much as we can. I think it's also our job as a newspaper to publish at least part of this evidence. It gets you, the reader, a little closer to the news, and allows you to see for yourself what came out there. Editor Scott Sherman wrote a thoughtful response to a comment by stillwalton on why we do this, and I've posted it below: As a matter of course, we always ask for evidence in high-profile trials. This is no different. I can tell you that we have not and will not make available the most disturbing parts of these tapes. We are making these available so that people may hear some of what the Texas jury heard when coming to its decision.Jeffs argued that his religious rights and beliefs were being trampled by the court process.Interviews with jurors have shown that the tapes were a major part in convincing them that Jeffs went beyond religious beliefs with his behavior. We want to make sure our readers have the opportunity to make up their own minds.That said, I am one of the Trib employees who has had to listen to these recordings (Lindsay Whitehurst and Nate Carlisle had to hear them in court) and decide whether they were of news value.I spent 10 minutes listening to the first tape we got before deciding it was far too graphic to be of news value. My editors and peers agreed, and we have not posted any portion of that tape.I spent the better part of my afternoon yesterday listening to all three hours of this tape to select portions that I thought would give our readers some insight into what this trial was all about. I pared down the 180 minutes of audio to 30 minutes of newsworthy material, and then I and several editors reviewed those portions and made deeper cuts to protect the victims.Posting these clips was only done after days of careful consideration of the news value, careful editing to find the most important parts of the tape, and the utmost care not to directly open up the victims to further damage.We hope those readers who choose to listen to these audio clips will gain a greater insight into how the jury made its decision to find Warren Jeffs guilty. And we hope those readers whose sensibilities may be offended by hearing Jeffs' instructions to these girls will simply read the story and choose not to listen to the audio.
Thank you for being a Tribune reader.