Suspect won’t fight some sex charges

A defense attorney conceded Tuesday that a judge will probably find his client, a former youth minister, guilty of many of the sexual misconduct charges levied against him for relationships he had with two teenage girls who were once part of his church youth group.

However, attorney Chris Bugbee argued in his opening statement that authorities lack enough evidence to find his client, 33-year-old James D. Ritter, guilty of sexually exploiting one of the girls.

Ritter was not an ordained minister but worked full time as director of Christian education at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, 7307 N. Nevada St. He was fired a week before he turned himself in on Dec. 22, 2005, to face six counts of sexual misconduct with a minor and one count each of communication with a minor for immoral purposes and sexual exploitation of a minor.

His trial started Tuesday before Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly. The case will be tried as a bench trial, meaning that Rielly will serve both as judge and jury in the case, which could be completed as early as today.

“We will challenge very little, if any, of the evidence the state submits during the course of this trial,” said Bugbee, a former deputy Spokane County prosecutor. “And I suspect … that at the end of this case, it’s likely that you will find that the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he has committed some if not all of the counts. We don’t intend to challenge them for the most part.”

However, Bugbee said a search of Ritter’s computer did not find a photograph that he argued is necessary to proving the former youth minister was guilty of sexually exploiting one of the girls.

That girl, now 17, testified that she previously had been sexually assaulted by her father prior to joining the youth group and meeting Ritter.

Ritter mostly looked down at his legal pad as the girl, who was 14 at the time, explained how she met Ritter and how he befriended her.

She went on to explain how Ritter would ask her to perform certain acts and touch herself so he could watch on the Web camera.

The girl told her mother, who confronted church officials in November 2005 and filed a report with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s Detective John Grandinetti said the family agreed to turn over its computer, which contained records of many of the online conversations between Ritter and the girl.

While searching Ritter’s computer, a forensics expert and Grandinetti found explicit Internet chat transcripts and pornographic Web camera images involving the first teenage girl and another older teenage girl.

The older girl later filed a report with Spokane police.

According to a search warrant affidavit, the older girl told detectives she met Ritter on a youth group vacation to Florida in the summer of 2004 and felt attracted to him. The next summer they began communicating nightly through e-mail and instant messaging, the warrant said.

The conversations usually started generically, but Ritter always steered the conversation toward sex, Grandinetti wrote in court records.

The girl “reported that Ritter asked (her) if she liked to be handcuffed, and he sent her a Web cam photo of a girl handcuffed, having sexual intercourse,” Grandinetti wrote.

In the fall, the girl met Ritter at Friendship Park, after youth group and had sex for the first time, according to court records.

They agreed to get together every Tuesday after the youth gatherings to have sex in various locations, Grandinetti wrote.