A Texas appeals court has upheld the conviction of a 60-year-old follower of Warren Jeffs.
Prosecutors used DNA tests and Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints records to show Allan Eugene Keate sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl he took as a polygamous wife in 2004. She later gave birth to a son. He was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Keate appealed, saying the girl could have been artificially inseminated or impregnated outside of Texas.
But in a ruling issued Friday, appeals court judges disagreed, saying "it is not incumbent upon the State to exclude 'every reasonable hypothesis other than guilt' for the evidence to be considered sufficient," according to the ruling.
The evidence against Keate and 11 other men, including Jeffs, was gathered in a massive 2008 raid on the group's Yearning for Zion Ranch located outside remote Eldorado, Texas.
The 11th defendant, former FLDS church president Wendell Nielsen, is scheduled to go to trial March 21.
