Joshua Carrier, a former Colorado Springs police officer who is accused of molesting 22 boys and faces 207 counts of child exploitation, possessing child pornography and child sexual assault will have only one trial for all charges against him, District Court Judge David Gilbert ruled on Friday, The Gazette reports.
According to 7News, Carrier's attorney, Christopher Decker, argued against the judge's ruling of a single trial claiming that the child porn charges and the sexual assault charges are separate issues and should be separate trials and that combining the two could create a situation where Carrier does not receive a fair trial.
In May of 2011, Carrier was arrested for buying child pornography and then re-arrested a week later on suspicion of sexually assaulting several children. Before his arrest, Carrier was already the subject of an internal affairs review for showing his gun at a middle school sporting event (Carrier had been employed as a school resource officer and wrestling coach at Horace Mann Middle School in Colorado Springs prior to allegations of sex assault).
The Gazette spoke with an alleged victim's parent who said that when Carrier was working at Horace Mann as a wrestling coach he sexually abused her son under the pretense of examining the young boy for ringworm, a common wrestler illness.
Back in May, when Carrier was initially arrested, a Horace Mann student on the wrestling team made an anonymous statement to a CBS4 affiliate in Colorado Springs that Carrier placed his hands on student wrestler's bodies frequently when checking for ringworm:
He would actually take us into his own office one by one and touch us and look at us and stuff.
7News reports that Carrier had several assignments that placed him in situations with youth including a school resource officer at Horace Mann Elementary where he also served has wrestling coach, a coach for the Police Athletic League, and as an advisor to youth in the Explorer Scout Program.
Carrier worked for the Colorado Springs Police Department for seven years before he resigned in June 2011 amidst the assault and child pornography allegations.