Texas town braces for trial of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs

(CBS/AP) SAN ANGELO - Jury selection is the first challenge of what promises to be a complicated criminal trial for polygamist religious leader Warren Jeffs.

The case of the 55-year-old ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of the Mormon church that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven and should be protected under U.S. religious freedoms, begins Monday in San Angelo, Texas

Jeffs is charged with sexual assault of one child and aggravated sexual assault of another. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted and will be tried separately on bigamy charges in October.

The accusations stem from an April 2008 police raid on a church compound known as Yearning For Zion outside the town of Eldorado, about 45 miles south of San Angelo. Authorities who believed girls were being forced into polygamous marriages removed more than 400 children living at the compound, and TV images of women wearing frontier-style dresses and 19th century hairdos were shown across the country.

The original call to a Texas domestic abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax -- authorities suspect that a woman in her 30s living in Colorado made it. Most of the children seized from the ranch have since been returned to their families, but the evidence collected during the raid proved enough to charge Jeffs and 11 other church men with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy.

So far, all seven who have gone to trial have been convicted, receiving sentences of six to 75 years in prison.

District Judge Barbara Walther ordered the Jeffs case moved to San Angelo, which meant transferring it from Schleicher County, with 3,500 residents, to nearby Tom Green County, home to just more than 110,000.

Walther said 700 jury summons letters were sent, but only about 280 potential jurors will show up.