Jury Selection to Begin Tuesday for 9-day Trial

By Matt Stensland
Steamboat Today
May 23, 2014

http://www.steamboattoday.com/news/2014/may/23/jury-selection-begin-tuesday-nine-day-trial/

Steamboat Springs — Attorneys met with Judge Shelley Hill on Friday to discuss last minute details before a nine-day trial is set to begin Tuesday.

#John Brothers Jr., has been charged with 16 felonies and a sentence enhancer that would extend his sentence if he is found guilty.

#Brothers, a former preacher in Yampa and teacher at Heritage Christian School just west of Steamboat, is suspected of sexually assaulting one boy eight times throughout a six-week period. The boy and his father reported the incident in March 2012. Brothers was arrested the next month.

#Brothers attended the hearing Friday with his parents and was being represented by Routt County Public Defender Sheryl Uhlmann. Matt Karzen and Eliot Thompson represented the District Attorney’s Office.

#Brothers is no longer in custody. He was set free shortly before the original trial date in January after a mistake was made by the District Attorney’s Office. They did not meet the deadline that requires prosecutors to supply reports from expert witnesses at least 35 days before the trial.

#In addition to the Routt County case, Brothers has been charged in Kentucky with two counts of first-degree sexual abuse related to allegations that he sexually assaulted two youths at a church where he worked as a youth minister after leaving Colorado.