It took a Texas jury less than 30 minutes Tuesday to decide what penalty to give to self-proclaimed polygamist prophet, and convicted pedophile rapist, Warren Jeffs.

They gave him life, plus 20 years, for raping two “child brides,” ages 12 and 15. Testimony, however, links him to sexual assaults on dozens more under-age girls during so-called “sacred” group sex sessions in his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints “temple” in El Dorado, Texas.

Audio tapes were played for visibly sickened jurors in San Angelo, Texas, capturing Jeffs panting as he “blessed” girls among his nearly 80 alleged “wives” by raping them, accompanied by “Amens” and closing in the name of Jesus Christ.

(He’s also claimed to be channeling Christ, as it were, in repeatedly “prophesizing” doom and disaster for the court trying him, the judge presiding over his trial and the prosecutors “persecuting” him).

As a Christian, I strive mightily to be forgiving, to withhold judgment of others when I know so well my own flaws, and to remember that God loves his children — even those who misuse His name to commit atrocities. But I believe He weeps for the victims of these twisted humans who exercise their “free will” to choose evil.

I want to believe He also is there to comfort those bruised, battered and psychologically, spiritually and physically abused souls. That often, perhaps most of the time, occurs through us.

Such cases have some people fondly recalling how this thing may have been handled in Texas, say 125 years ago, in a small town with a big oak tree and some strong rope. Such cases could make even a skeptic wish that there is, indeed, a hell; if there is not, they might say, it would be a cosmic travesty.

It’s not a matter here of Jeffs being “innocent until proven guilty.” That’s been done, and it took jurors a little over three hours last week to come to that conclusion of guilty. Tuesday was the “penalty phase” of the trial, and so far as human beings are capable of delivering it, a jury delivered Justice.

Or, at least punishment.

Life in prison? That’s the maximum jurors could give. Ultimate justice? That’s in the hands of the Father of us all.

Perhaps Jeffs will have plenty of time to re-read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” which he reportedly has studied several times already, and with alleged fascination. Or, perhaps he can cover yet more songs — he’s already done that, apparently, singing John Denver and Bob Dylan tunes and telling the faithful he wrote them himself.

What remains, though, is the judgment members of Jeffs’ isolated polygamous sect will deliver. They are cut off, by his command, from TV news, the Internet, outside newspapers, and will likely get a watered-down version of the proceedings, if anything at all.

More likely, some, perhaps most of them, will blindly continue to see this as some sort of martyrdom for their “prophet.”