Morgenstern trial on child sexual assault charges will stay in Spokane

The trial for a former physician accused of videotaping multiple sexual assaults of young boys in Washington and Idaho will remain in Spokane.

Craig Morgenstern, 46, asked U.S. District Court Judge William F. Nielsen to move his trial on a 36-count federal criminal indictment due to pretrial publicity of his arrest and the investigation. Morgenstern was arrested in October 2014 after police questioned a boy near the doctor’s Nine Mile Falls home who said he’d been drugged and molested.

Nielsen also ruled that prosecutors could introduce photographs taken by police in his home the night the boy was discovered. Prosecutors allege Morgenstern removed several digital devices that may have contained evidence after police first searched his home. Those computers, tablets and digital cameras were present in photos taken during the first search but removed during a second search several days later.

Police found digital evidence of other incidents involving boys at a hotel in Idaho, according to the indictment handed down in November 2014. Morgenstern, who had worked as a physician at the Mann-Grandstaff Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Spokane, is scheduled to go to trial in February.