AMANDA LEE MYERS
Associated Press Writer

KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) - Arizona prosecutors waited 2 1/2 years for the day they would see polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs begin to answer to charges here in the arranged marriages between three teenage girls and older men.

That wait ended Wednesday, when Jeffs pleaded not guilty to the charges and said only the word ``yes’’ when Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn asked him if he was Warren Jeffs.

The court hearing was Jeffs’ first in Arizona, where prosecutors filed charges against him even before he faced charges in Utah, where he was convicted last year of rape as an accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

Now Jeffs will sit alone in his Kingman jail cell 23 hours a day before his trial begins in roughly six to eight months. If convicted on all charges, Jeffs could get anything from probation to 27 years in prison.

If convicted and sentenced to prison time in Arizona, Jeffs would first have to finish out his Utah sentence of two consecutive terms of five years to life in prison.

Jeffs, 52, is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, based in Colorado City, Ariz., and nearby Hildale, Utah. The isolated sect practices plural marriage as a central tenet of their faith.

The mainstream Mormon church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, renounced polygamy more than a century ago, excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.

Jeffs was a fugitive and was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list when he was arrested during a traffic stop outside Las Vegas in August 2006.

Jeffs is charged in Arizona as an accomplice with four counts of incest and four counts of sexual contact with a minor in an indictment handed up last year. The cases stem from the arranged marriage of a man in his early 50s to his 17-year-old relative and a marriage between a 19-year-old man and his 14-year-old cousin _ the same marriage that led to the Utah conviction.

Jeffs also is charged with one count of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor from a case filed in 2005.

While Smith said the witnesses in the 2007 cases are solid, including one who testified against Jeffs during his Utah trial, the witness in the older case is iffier.

That case involves the arranged marriage between then-16-year-old Candi Shapley and Randolph Barlow, now 34, who was more than a decade older than her when they married.

In a move that stunned prosecutors, Shapley refused to testify against Barlow at his 2006 trial. Shapley had previously cooperated with authorities while other alleged victims hadn’t.

At the time, Smith said the girl’s mother had said she would do whatever she needed to do to keep her daughter from testifying against or harming Jeffs.

Barlow was cleared of sexual assault charges after Shapley refused to testify.

``It’s no secret that one of the victims in the past was not willing to testify, and I think that’s certainly something that could happen again, and I’m trying to find that out as soon as possible,’’ Smith said Wednesday. Jeffs’ attorney, Mike Piccarreta, entered the not guilty plea on his behalf at the hearing. Afterward, Piccarreta said ``it’s difficult times’’ for Jeffs, but declined to speak further, saying he was just worried about handling the case.

At the hearing, Jeffs had a slight smile when he walked into the courtroom and smiled at times as he talked in hushed voices with his lawyers. Once the proceeding began, he was expressionless and had his cuffed hands folded lightly in his lap.

Conn ordered Jeffs held in the Mohave County jail without bond and set a case management hearing for March 19 during which lawyers on both sides will exchange the evidence they have and what witnesses they plan to call during trial. Piccarreta plans to ask the judge for a change of venue, saying Kingman is too close to St. George, Utah, the site of Jeffs’ first trial, for him to get a fair trial here.