The trials for two men accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in Ouray County in 2023 have been postponed, even as the woman and the judge presiding over the cases expressed concerns about further delays.
Gabriel Trujillo and Ashton Whittington were set to go to trial starting Feb. 9, but Seventh Judicial Chief District Judge Cory Jackson agreed on Jan. 15 to delay those trials at the request of prosecutors and attorneys for both defendants.
Trujillo is now scheduled for trial July 29-Aug. 7. Jackson didn’t immediately set a new trial date for Whittington.
The two men, along with Nate Dieffenderfer, have all been charged with felony sexual assault in connection with the alleged May 2023 assault, which the now 20-year-old woman said occurred in the home of then-Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood. Wood is Dieffenderfer’s stepfather.
Since the men were arrested in December 2023, all three cases have stalled for a host of reasons: legal challenges filed by lawyers for Trujillo and Whittington, delays in evidence testing and turnover within the Seventh Judicial District Attorney’s Office. The trial deferrals mean the cases won’t be resolved until nearly three years after the alleged crime — or longer.
Jackson’s order to postpone the trials for Trujillo and Whittington followed several other rulings made earlier in the week and last month. Those included a decision to move their trials to Montrose, an order allowing Trujillo’s attorney to have limited access to information on the woman’s cellphone and an order to try Trujillo and Whittington separately.
Trials delayed
During the Jan. 15 hearing, Deputy District Attorney Stacey Haase cited several reasons for delaying the trials for Trujillo and Whittington, including difficulty securing a witness who would be traveling from Germany. She also cited limited availability for Deputy District Attorney Stephen Allen, who is helping Haase prosecute the case.
Haase said Allen is preparing to try a murder case in Delta County and will soon go on paternity leave.
Haase also said she is working with Whittington’s attorneys, public defenders Patrick Crane and Anya von Soestbergen, on pursuing a settlement conference, an apparent attempt to resolve the case without going to trial.
“All of these circumstances have greatly impacted our ability to prepare for trial at this point in time,” Haase said.
She also noted she is the fourth different prosecutor assigned to the three cases since they were filed.
Trujillo’s attorney, Dan Shaffer, said a trial postponement wasn’t ideal but acknowledged he was likely to seek a delay himself, in part because he may need to seek an expert witness to testify about evidence on the woman’s phone.
Asked by Jackson how the woman felt about a delay, Haase said the woman was reluctant to push the cases further out but ultimately approved a postponement.
“She is tired, obviously. If she had her way, these cases would have been resolved long ago,” Haase said.
Jackson said he didn’t see the benefit in forcing attorneys to go to trial when neither side is prepared. But he also said he was concerned about the impact a delay would have on the community. He asked attorneys to be mindful of the fact that the cases are “aging.”
“The community has a strong interest in finding a resolution to these cases,” he said.
Trujillo and Whittington, who pleaded not guilty in their cases last September, waived their rights to a speedy trial during last week’s hearing. Under state law, defendants must be tried within six months of entering a plea, unless they waive those rights.
Dieffenderfer, the third defendant in the case, has had his trial postponed twice. He’s now scheduled to stand trial starting April 27.
Trials moved to Montrose
Jackson, who agreed last summer to move Dieffenderfer’s trial to Montrose, did the same for Trujillo and Whittington in an order issued Dec. 23.
Attorneys for all three men argued pretrial publicity made it unlikely their clients could receive a fair trial in Ouray County. The judge rejected that argument in Dieffenderfer’s case last summer, consenting to move it only because prosecutors and Dieffenderfer’s attorney effectively agreed to it.
Jackson applied the same logic to his order moving the trials for Trujillo and Whittington to Montrose.
Defense allowed limited access to woman’s cellphone The judge issued an order Jan. 12 allowing Shaffer to have access to a limited amount of information on the woman’s cellphone.
During their investigation, prosecutors learned about a conversation between the woman and a friend that could clear the defendants of guilt, according to Jackson’s order. They turned over the woman’s cellphone to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which produced a simple report indicating there was no conversation on the phone. But CBI was unable to extract only specific conversations from the phone and instead produced a full extraction of the phone.
In his order, Jackson said it wasn’t clear whether prosecutors have reviewed the full extraction. If they have, he said they must turn over the information to Trujillo’s attorney within seven days. He also said if Shaffer wants to introduce evidence from the full extraction, he must “make a showing that the request is reasonable.”
Trujillo, Whittington to be tried separately Jackson agreed with attorneys for Trujillo and Whittington that they should be tried separately, rather than together, as prosecutors had sought.
In his ruling, the judge pointed to his reasoning for denying a previous motion from prosecutors to try all three cases at the same time, citing the potential for confusing jurors as one factor.
“The court can adequately accommodate all three trials. It is likely that the jury will have to consider complex DNA evidence related to three defendants, and joinder may result in confusion,” Jackson ruled in April 2025.
