Warren Jeffs Condition Improves After Polygamist Moved To Prison Hospital
Convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has had his “critical condition” status upgraded to just “serious condition” since being moved to a Texas prison hospital on Tuesday.
Jeffs required medical intervention after claiming that he was ill due to fasting since his conviction. He was taken to the East Texas Medical Center in Tyler on Sunday.
Jeffs was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in August, for having sexual relations with underage female members of his church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. He claims the girls were his "spiritual wives."
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DNA evidence that proved he fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl led to his conviction.
While being transferred to the Texas prison hospital at Galveston on Tuesday, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons described Jeffs as "awake and alert."
"Whenever possible, we send inmates needing medical attention to Hospital Galveston because it is a secure prison facility," Lyons said.
Since then, he has been put in a medically induced coma. Medical officials say they cannot divulge any further details about Jeffs' condition.
Jeffs had been under investigation for many years and has reacted in similar fashions to imprisonment before.
In 2007, he attempted to hang himself and also banged his head against the walls of his cell while awaiting trial on rape charges in Washington County, Utah. While he insisted to a mental health professional that he was not attempting suicide, he was later hospitalized for dehydration and depression.
In 2009, while imprisoned in a jail in Arizona, he fasted to the point of needing to be force-fed.
Jeffs is currently serving a life sentence, with an additional 20-year team. He is not eligible for parole until he is at least 100-years-old.
