Reports: Jeffs has mental health problems

SALT LAKE CITY — The jailed leader of a polygamous sect struggles with depression and anxiety and can go days without food or water.

Warren Jeffs has spent long hours motionless on his knees in prayer — so long, his knees developed ulcers, two mental health specialists reported in evaluations unsealed Tuesday. Both found Jeffs mentally competent.

On Friday, 5th District Judge James Shumate declared Jeffs, 51, competent to stand trial. The judge at the same time ordered the release of edited versions of Jeffs’ evaluations.

The reports were posted Tuesday on a court Web site.

Shumate ordered Jeffs to stand trial in September on rape by accomplice charges surrounding the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin in 2001.

“Mr. Jeffs is absolutely healthy, absolutely capable of going forward,” the judge said Friday.

Jeffs’ competency reports, however, portray a fragile religious leader who has been refusing to take psychoactive medication and can turn “catatonic” or “stuporous” from fasting.

The edited versions of the reports don’t identify the medication or its purpose.

Jeffs’ physical and emotional health came into question in January when he was taken from the Washington County jail to a St. George hospital for undisclosed treatment.

And at a March 27 court hearing — during a time of fasting, according to the mental health evaluations — Jeffs appeared ill, pale and skeletal. At one point, he nodded off and drooled on himself. His demeanor led to Shumate’s sealed order for evaluations.

The reports found that Jeffs’ fasting can drop his lean body weight by six pounds to 130 pounds — he stands 6 feet 3 inches tall — and can affect his mental condition at court appearances.

Jeffs had improved by early April when he was interviewed, they said. In court Friday, Jeffs chatted with his lawyers. His face was no longer ashen, and he appeared to have gained weight.

“My religion is one of peace,” Jeffs, president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, told examiners, but he also denied having any spiritual powers. “I don’t consider myself special.”

The evaluators differed only on whether Jeffs suffered from “substantial” mental illness. Both agreed he was competent to stand trial.

The defense’s examiner, Eric Nielsen of Associated Behavior Consultants Inc. of the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay, said Jeffs suffered from mental illness. In the edited version of Nielsen’s report, no attribution or other references explaining the condition could be found.

“It is the examiner’s opinion that this man is competent to proceed at this point,” Nielsen wrote in his April 18 report. “However, he may suffer a relapse as he is not taking medication which would be prophylactic for him” — prophylactic means preventive.

In the prosecution report, Tim Kockler, director of Neuropsychology Services at Dixie Regional Medical Center, said Jeffs sometimes suffers from “depressive disorder.”

His report didn’t say whether the mild depression was brought on by Jeffs’ stay since last August at the county jail, where he is kept in solitary confinement.

“Mr. Jeffs demonstrated a rational and factual understanding of the proceeding against him,” Kockler concluded in another report filed April 23. “He has the ability to consult with counsel and to participate in the proceedings against him with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.”

Jeffs was born in Sacramento, Calif., and grew up in the Salt Lake valley. He said his mother was still living but that his father had died, but refused to discuss his family or married life.

Jeffs said he regarded the two charges of rape as an accomplice as a serious threat to his liberty. “They are accusing me of influencing someone to commit these crimes,” he told one examiner.

Both reports found Jeffs was cooperating with his lawyers and even discussing events surrounding the charges — a topic he refused to share with examiners. He refused to take a standard mental health test.

Jeffs presides over a community of about 10,000 members on the Utah-Arizona border that practices polygamy and arranged marriages.