The Arizona Court of Appeals on Aug. 5 upheld the conviction and sentence of a Colorado City fundamentalist Mormon man for sexual crimes related to his pluralist marriage to an underage woman.

A three-judge panel rejected arguments by Kelly Fischer, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that the state's constitutional provisions banning polygamy violated his right to free exercise of religion.

Fischer argued that he was entitled to have sex with an underage woman – named "J.S." by the court – because she was his spouse from a "celestial marriage," a union that should be recognized by the state.

The young woman was the daughter of one of his wives and had given birth to his child in 2001 when she was 17 years old.

The court's judges were not swayed, noting that in Reynolds v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment did not extend to practicing polygamy.

The 1878 case sprang from the Mormon Church's reaction to a campaign by President Ulysses S. Grant to stamp out polygamy. The church recruited George Reynolds, a secretary to Brigham Young, to challenge Grant's policy, according to Oxford University legal texts.

The Court of Appeals' ruling stated that the nation's high court in Reynolds distinguished the First Amendment's granting of protection to the right of holding beliefs from actual conduct.

Fischer argued that although the findings in Reynolds were never overruled, it should be nonbinding because "it cannot withstand a modern constitutional analysis," but the appeals panel noted several recent cases, including a 2006 polygamy challenge in Utah reaffirmed the "continued validity" of the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The Aug. 5 opinion, written by Judge Donn Kessler, also flatly rejected Fischer's assertion that the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of a Texas law banning sodomy can be used to a basis for affirming his right from government intrusion protected by the 14^th Amendment.

The Supreme Court noted, according to Kessler, that the sodomy decision was explicitly limited to consenting adults and not "persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not be easily refused."

Fischer was indicted in 2005 by a Mohave County grand jury and later sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years probation for sexual contact with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual contact with a minor.

His attorney, David Goldberg, said he plans on filing a petition for review with the Arizona Supreme Court within 30 days.