FRIDAY2/3/17,SATURDAY2/4, Good morning Brandon, I just read more about your trial. An old article from June 20,’16 Brandon Perry Smith’s long-delayed murder trial has been delayed yet again.
Smith stands accused of the murder of Leeds resident Jerrica Christensen during a grisly middle-of-the-night incident that took place at the home of Smith’s co-defendant, Paul Clifford Ashton, on 600 South in St. George on Dec. 11, 2010. Ashton was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of St. George resident Brandie Sue Dawn Jerden and the attempted murder of James Fiske during the same incident.
Smith’s trial, anticipated to last two weeks and scheduled for the middle of October, was rescheduled for the end of January 2017 after Smith’s defense attorney, Mary Corporan, indicated she had a personal conflict with the October trial dates during a motion hearing in Judge G. Michael Westfall’s courtroom in 5th District Court on Monday.
Last February, at the request of the victim’s family, the Washington County Attorney’s Office announced they would no longer be seeking the death penalty in order to expedite the legal proceedings and avoid more of the delays that come with the prosecution of a capital murder case.
Corporan told the court when the trial dates were scheduled following the state’s decision against seeking the death penalty, she and co-counsel Gary Pendleton had anticipated she would be removed from the case due to the fact it was no longer a capital murder trial. However, Corporan has since been informed that the state’s indigent defense fund will continue to pay for her to represent Smith at trial despite the state’s decision, and a conflict she had with the trial dates would now be an issue.
Westfall, despite voicing concerns over Smith’s right and the right of the victim’s family to a speedy trial, agreed to reschedule.
Westfall set the new trial dates to run from Jan. 30 through Feb. 10, 2017. In a statement e-mailed to The Spectrum, Ellen Hensley, Christensen’s mother, wrote, “Ironically, Jerrica's birthday is Feb. 5 — right in the middle of the trial. Bittersweet time for the memory of her last day on earth to fall on the memory of her first day on earth.”
Both the prosecution and the defense then agreed to a series of deadlines leading up to the trial. The names of experts expected to testify at trial are required to be submitted by Sep. 1, motions relating to the trial will be filed prior to Oct. 1, the deadline for lists of rebuttal experts is Oct.15, and the deadline for jury instruction and jury questionnaire language submissions as well as motions relating to expert witnesses is Nov. 1.
Westfall also heard arguments from both the defense and the prosecution in relation to a defense motion regarding the constitutionality of Utah law relating to the mitigating circumstances surrounding murder charges during Monday’s hearing.
Pendleton restated arguments he’d made previously in a memorandum to the court about the ways in which a defendant might approach a jury through jury instructions regarding any circumstances surrounding the murder that could potentially lessen the sentence or reduce the crime from aggravated murder to manslaughter. Pendleton said changes in Utah laws made in 2009 regarding murders committed under mitigating circumstances like extreme emotional distress, with the mistaken belief that the killer was acting in self-defense, or mental illness have created a situation in which there is “disparaging treatment between people that are similarly situated.”
Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap rebutted Pendleton’s motion by arguing that the 2009 law was intended to relieve the state from the burden of being asked to prove a negative, and that there is no disparity in the way different defendants are treated because the statute does in fact address different scenarios.
Westfall did not rule on Pendletons motion during Monday’s hearing, instead stating that he would take the motion under advisement and issue a written ruling.@@ KJ sent out a text last night, saying how hard the proceedings had been. The defense is supposed to start today and she hopes the jury has not already been convinced of your guilt. She hopes they can open their minds as the defense begins its case. AS I analyzed your picture I can see your long hair pulled back, your full sideburns, your striped blue/gray clothing and your hands appear to be behind your back. I suspect they have you in cuffs. Your clean shaven face looks innocent. This picture is a million times better than the one with long hair spread out behind you and the pencil mustache and soul patch. That one made you look like and evil foreigner. I wouldn't been surprised if your body and mind react to this judging/ trial by dissociating and distancing you from all the negativity. I have to believe that murder can be forgiven. Moses killed the guard and later became the greatest prophet to ever lead Israel. I wonder how that worked. @ God bless you. God bless your defense and God please bless the judge and the jury. I t n o j c, a. @@ So bps, you probably know the way to read email dialog is from the bottom message up:
III.) fascinating! That is terrible to find out! I have a couple of good friends who are just now getting into John Pontius with a book about Light? Supposedly following the Light to experience the 2nd COmforter and see Jesus Christ. Which I do believe is possible and even desirable. But I do not want anything to do with fakeness or deception.
Thank you for the heads up. He is a fiction novel writer. uh oh.. .
II.) On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 10:55 AM, vern jensen <phonev6@gmail.com> wrote:
I checked out all of John Pontius' books. He was a novel writer. He did it for the money.
I listened to Spencer give a fireside, taped, youtube or something. It was deceitful and you know how we grew up with deceit. Yuck.
I currently believe: The apostles and prophets will share with us all the appropriate info from the spirit world. Those things are too sacred for anyone else to publish. [with God's permission or requirement. We have the proper channels of revelation for the church and world established. Hiram Page had a seer stone but his info was cool but from Satan. He had to give it up. Joseph was the only source of revelation for the church at that time.]
So I wrote in my journal of my thrill and love for "Visions of Glory". I copied a page of scripture into my journal celebrating the arrival of those sacred precious truths! I was so heartbroken they were from Satan. Thanks Satan, that was a cool look and the 10 tribes being underground in Canada with artificial light growing their crops and bringing with them their scriptures, This being Spencer's special calling. . . was so so cool!
I.) On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 12:37 PM, gayelinn mecham <mecham.gayelinn@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello My best buddy~
Tell me about "Spencer" not being real? I read much of, and skimmed the rest of Visions of Glory and understood that Spencer was a real person, but just not his real name. . . yet, I have always felt kind of funny about that book. Not sure why; or exactly what kind of funny the feeling is. So is that a made up book of fiction as well?
I love you Vern.
0.) G,
1- How fun you already know all about Julie Rowe plus you bargained. I'll read these books if you'll read these sections.
2- You walk many days with Britner! Wonderful.
3- Bob Davis doesn't dare to get on Facebook. He thinks he is being spied on. :)
4- I sat and visited with him in the foyer yesterday. Yep, he's a prepper.
5- He joined the church here in Saint George without his adopted family. He reads slow but likes to be an authority. He is almost desperate to be right all the time. Poor guy.
6- I have a number of friends like Aunty Angela that post everyday. I just stop following them. I don't have to stop friending them or anything. That is also what I did to that Facebook group, last days, you invited me to. I was so so sad to discover Spencer in "Visions of Glory" wasn't real. I won't get caught on that cliff again.
7- I had Bob rate Julie Rowe's book 1-10
He gave it a 6.5 as nonfiction.
I gave it a 10 as fiction. FICTION! it was great! :)
8- Joke: sad that her prophesied earthquake didn't occur![because of the false prophecy bps, a bunch of her followers gave her up/ abandoned her. ]
v
@@ Location:FS Time: Noon -Hello Brandon, The 3 Pines Park had races/ bike races going on this morning when I went down there on my dog walk with Molly. There is a company called Saint George Races that charges $15-$30 entrance fee to then bike race with your age group! The parking lot and road to the park must have had 100 cars for families to be part of the races today. Who would have thought that could be a viable business. They had loud music going, and announcer at the finish line, big blow up looping arch with their logo and name over the finish line [you know those kind where they have a fan keeping it inflated with air, like a bounce house-v] and tie dyed-logo T-shirts strung between the trees for sale. My goodness! My quiet park was having an event! @ So I read the first 190 pages of “The Myth Makers” by Hugh Nibley the last 2 days. Delightful. Hugh Nibley was such a good read! I have a beautiful 500 page comic book called the Book of Mormon on Trial. HN has scores of footnotes for each chapter, maybe even hundreds, showing where he got the anti mormon printed quotes from, which he uses as dialog by all the different authors in this investigation. When I was a boy they would have Perry Mason on TV. [Defense attorney Perry Mason defends dozens of falsely accused people over the course of this long-running courtroom drama, and he manages to clear each and every one of them, usually by drawing out the real criminal on the witness stand. He is capably assisted by investigator Paul Drake and secretary Della Street, and is a continual thorn in the side of District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Perry Mason is an American legal drama series originally broadcast on CBS television from September 21, 1957, to May 22, 1966. ] There is something very dramatic about a trial! KJ texted us last night telling how depleted / exhausted and disheartened she felt after all the prosecution testimony and pictures. She just prayed and hoped the jury will be receptive to the defense. @ At the end of the 190 pages not only has HN impugned all the testimonies but then he went the next step to show where they all originated. I told Bill I had read the book thinking it was one of the ones I had already checked out before. It turns out I hadn’t bothered to read it because I did not want to dwell on the negative. Who needs to know what all the anti mormon literature says? Not me! But since BillY brought it up I decided to venture. Man, if you are going to read anti Mormon literature be sure to do it from Hugh Nibley! He makes it a treat! Bps, you may remember that the editor of the Dogberry Paper rented/ used Grandin’s printing press and building on weekends. You may also remember the problems JS had with him taking early pages of the BoM and printing them in his paper and how JS had to threaten him to get him to stop. Well as it turns out Mr. Dogberry wrote a fantasy article which made fun of Nephites, Moroni, JS etc.. Spoof/ Lampoon/ Parody. It turns out it was the earliest thing in print about JS and the BoM and the Church so. . . it is quoted as truth and believed because of the early historical date! Amazing! @Dogberry: As I said, that was a joke. It was a parody.
Chairman: It did not pretend to be factual?
Dogberry: There’s many a true word spoken in jest.
Chairman: But I am talking about the charges you did not repeat in your serious articles. You do not claim that any effort was made to be accurate in your “Book of Pukei”?
Dogberry: Read some of it, if you think I was serious!
Chairman: We shall do that. Will the clerk please read?
Clerk (reads): The Book of Pukei, chapter one:
And it came to pass in the latter days, that wickedness did much abound in the land, and the “idle and slothful said one to another, let us send for Walters the Magician, who has strange books, and deals with familiar spirits, peradventure he will inform us where the Nephites, hid their treasure. . . . And it came to pass, that when the Idle and Slothful became weary of their night labors, they said one to another, lo! This imp of the Devil, hath deceived us, let us no more of him, or peradventure, ourselves, our wives, and our little ones, will become chargeable on the town.”24
[So Walters the Magician] took his book, his rusty sword, and his magic stone, and his stuffed toad, and all his implements of witchcraft and returned to the mountains near Great Sodus Bay, where he holds communion with the Devil, even unto this day. Now the rest of the acts of the magician, how his mantle fell upon the Prophet Jo. Smith, Jun., and how Jo. made a league with the spirit, who afterwards turned out to be an angel, and how he obtained the “Gold Bible” . . . will they not be faithfully recorded in the Book of Pukei?25
Later Joseph Smith says:
Behold! hath not the mantle of Walters the Magician fallen upon me . . . for lo! yesternight stood before me in the wilderness of Manchester, the spirit, who, from the beginning, has had in keeping all the treasures, hidden in the bowels of the earth. And he said unto me, . . . I am the spirit that walketh in darkness, and will shew thee great signs and wonders.26
And I looked, and behold a little old man stood before me, clad, as I supposed, in Egyptian raiment, except his Indian blanket and moccasins—his beard of silver white, hung far below his knees. On his head was an old fashioned military half cocked hat such as was worn in the days of the patriarch Moses—his speech was sweeter than molasses, and his words were the reformed Egyptian.27
Chairman: Thank you, that will do. You are quite playful, Mr. Dogberry.
Dogberry: It is jolly, isn’t it. Let the clerk read what the angel says next.
Clerk (reads):
And again he said unto me, “Joseph, thou who has been surnamed the ignoramus, Knowest thou not . . . that I have been sent unto thee by Mormon, . . . who was chief among the last ten tribes of Israel? Knowest thou not that this same apostle to the Nephites conducted that pious people . . . to these happy shores in bark canoes, where . . . God sent the smallpox among them, which killed two-thirds of them, and turned the rest into Indians? Knowest thou not . . . that this same Mormon wrote a book on plates of gold . . . concerning the aforesaid Nephites and their brethren the Lamanites, and their treasures (including a box of gold watches on which thou shalt hereafter raise money)?28
Chairman: Thank you again. That is enough to show the type of writing we are dealing with. It is the broadest satire, the typically heavy-handed Yankee humor of the nineteenth century—or am I wrong? Does anyone want to maintain that this is a serious paraphrase of the Book of Mormon, or that Joseph Smith himself would go around telling stories like this on himself? The description of the backwoods angel is obviously meant to be sidesplitting, but do you know, Mr. Dogberry, that some of the most eminent scholars have taken this document in dead earnest?
Dogberry: Impossible!
Chairman: Mrs. Brodie prefers it to your serious writing—she would be lost without it. You recall how your funny angel tells a funny story about the Nephites, including their treasure, a box of gold watches? Well, years later the little old man and the box of watches turn up as a serious part of the Mormon story. Mr. Stafford?
J. Stafford: Joseph Smith, Jr., “at a husking, called on me to become security for a horse, and said he would reward me handsomely, for he had found a box of watches, and they were as large as his fist, and he put one of them to his ear, and he could hear it ‘tick forty rods.’ . . . He wished to go east with them.”29
Chairman: If he could hear the thing tick at forty rods, why did he put it to his ear—how would he dare?
John C. Bennett: That would be just a manner of speaking.
Chairman: Still in the tradition of broad American humor. Since your work is the earliest on Smith, Mr. Dogberry, later investigations, honoring its high antiquity, have picked out of the extravaganza whatever suited their theories of Joseph Smith. Mrs. Brodie chooses to believe that Walter’s mantle actually did fall on Smith, though you don’t say so in your serious attack written later; others take the funny touch about the gold watches quite seriously; still others describe the original Moroni as a little old man in a cocked hat! So your fantasy has borne fruit. But let no one claim hereafter that because there “must be something behind all these stories” that that something is the true history of Joseph Smith. That is Brodian logic. Now, since all these full and close parallels between Joseph Smith and Walters and the Rochester Smith and the Belcher boy and Northrop cannot be accidental, either Smith’s doings were transferred to those other people, or theirs to him. Which is it? The first alternative must be rejected out of hand, since Joseph Smith was much younger than all but one of the other people, and their stories all come first—which nobody will deny. Was he their zealous disciple, then? No, no one claims that Smith ever saw Northrop or the other Smith or the Belcher boy. For a hundred years the unanimous charge against Joe Smith was that he was the author of all this nonsense, a unique and original character. He didn’t get it from them, and they didn’t get it from him. And there is not a shred of proof that he got it from Walters.
Howe: So we are back where we started.
Chairman: Not at all. The solution is simple: Smith didn’t get it, period. Here we have two bodies of literature containing the same strange, fantastic tales. We admit that this cannot be a mere coincidence: one corpus was inspired by the other. Which was the original? Of that there can be no doubt—the stories not about Smith are all the older, they are the original. How then did they all get attached to Joseph Smith? Did he borrow them? Did his followers insist on attributing them to him? Not a bit of it! He and they always deny any connection with the great Digging Cycle. Those who unload the stories on Smith are all his enemies, and what is more, they have an extremely difficult time connecting him with those tales in time and place, while they contradict each other at every step.
The time has come to sum up our little investigation. I will be brief. First, as to our witnesses—their quality and their quantity. The latter was excessive, the former defective. There were altogether too many witnesses; they were too eager; they all knew Smith so very, very well, though there is not the slightest indication that Smith ever knew them. All of which might be forgiven if their stories were not intrinsically absurd and thoroughly conflicting. Mr. Tucker, our prize witness, at no time gave any information that would indicate personal acquaintance with Joseph Smith or even firsthand observation of any act performed by him; whenever his testimony became specific it became absurd; whenever it became rational and confident it became also generalizing and editorial in nature. We were unable to discover any diggers or any victims, living or dead, of Smith’s purported treasure-hunting promotions. We were told with the greatest assurance that Smith found treasure and that he found none; that he prospered in the business and that he starved; that he dug in a few places and that he dug everywhere; that he merely pretended to dig; that he first learned peeping from his father, his mother, an old neighbor lady, a man in Pennsylvania; that he learned it from infancy, as an adolescent, and as a disciple of Walters—half-a-dozen specific and conflicting dates being confidently assigned to his acquiring of the black art. We have been told that Smith regularly dug and that he never dug at all; that he had to dig in the full moon and that he preferred the dark of the moon; that his band broke up at the first failures and that they went on for years; that he killed only one sheep and that he slaughtered herds of them; that he had a stone box and a wooden box—at least five different peepstones have been described. And the constant and glaring contradictions between these damning and disgraceful tales have been blithely attributed to conflicting versions circulated by the Smith family themselves!
Finally, when challenged to explain the factual realities which usually hide behind even the wildest rumors, we have not had to part company with the witnesses themselves to discover ample evidence for the efflorescence of strange and exotic tales of treasure digging in early nineteenth-century America among which every weird detail of the stories later attached to Joseph Smith is found in full bloom before Smith can possibly have been involved. In some cases the actual transfer of a story from an earlier setting to the orbit of the Smith family can be clearly demonstrated. If Joseph Smith is to be condemned, I fear it must be on far better evidence than this. The meeting is dismissed.
Hugh Nibley was one weird nut but we benefit from him!
