{"id":64456,"date":"2019-11-10T19:28:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T02:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/prosecutors-will-retry-pagosa-springs-man-accused-of-child-sex-assault\/"},"modified":"2019-11-11T02:28:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T02:28:35","slug":"prosecutors-will-retry-pagosa-springs-man-accused-of-child-sex-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/prosecutors-will-retry-pagosa-springs-man-accused-of-child-sex-assault\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutors will retry Pagosa Springs man accused of child sex assault"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=f94a3648-1d5d-4ef9-82d3-ac081e0a068a&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"469\" height=\"625\" alt=\"Keller\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Keller<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Prosecutors will retry a Pagosa Springs man who is accused of sexually assaulting a child last year in Bayfield after jurors last week could not come to a unanimous decision about guilt or innocence, resulting in a mistrial.<\/p>\n<p>6th Judicial District Attorney Christian Champagne said the new trial date is scheduled to start Jan. 21 and is expected to last about six days.<\/p>\n<p>Champagne said he could not comment further because it is an open case.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/durangoherald.com\/articles\/229300-pagosa-springs-man-arrested-on-suspicion-of-child-sex-assault\">Keller, 53, is accused of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl<\/a> in June 2018 while staying at the home of a mutual friend of Keller\u2019s ex-girlfriend.<\/p>\n<p>In a trial last week, Keller\u2019s defense attorneys, Kenneth Pace and Heather Little, said the child was making the story up for more attention.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors, however, said there is more than enough evidence to convict Keller, and pointed to his history of sexually abusing children.<\/p>\n<p>According to authorities, Keller was a registered sex offender. He was arrested in the Albertsons parking lot after being recognized on \u201cAmerica\u2019s Most Wanted\u201d for sexual assault on a child in 2008, a charge to which he pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n<p>During the course of the trial, jurors heard from the 2008 victim, who was also 8 years old at the time, as well as another victim who says Keller sexually assaulted her in 2007 when she was 6 years old.<\/p>\n<p>Jurors went into deliberation for about a day before <a href=\"https:\/\/durangoherald.com\/articles\/300427\">informing the court they could not reach a unanimous decision on whether Keller committed the crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Keller\u2019s defense attorneys did not immediately return a phone call Thursday seeking comment.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:jromeo@durangoherald.com\">jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>week could not reach decision, resulting in mistrial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1078,747,133,168,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-6th-judicial-district","tag-children","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64456"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}