Jury is still out in 'sexting' trial

A jury will resume deliberations Friday on whether a Highlands Ranch man tried to exploit two 14-year-old Colorado Springs girls by sending them sexually explicit text messages and pictures.

Daniel Zane Rigsby, 21, is accused of attempted sexual exploitation of a child and promoting obscenity to a minor in a series of messages and photos he sent to the youngsters starting in late 2007.

An 11-woman, one-man jury began deliberating the case shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday and recessed two hours later after reviewing a video tape of an interview Rigsby had with a detective.

The case came to light when the father of one of the girls intercepted some of the messages in May 2008 and turned the phone over to Colorado Springs police. A detective then continued the message exchange posing as the girl.

Rigsby's attorney, Christopher R. Decker, raised questions during the trial as to whether his client, who was 20 at the time of the incident, realized that the girls were 14 years old.

He also questioned the girls' credibility, noting that one posted her age as being older on a MySpace page.

"These are kids who are struggling with growing up, dealing with new technology and pushing the boundaries," Decker told the jurors. "This is a case about young people getting in over their heads."

But Deputy District Attorney Nan Scranton countered that Rigsby was the only one "pushing the boundaries."

"Who is sending the webcam transmission of himself masturbating?" she asked the jury.

"Who is sending pictures of his penis? Who is asking (one of the girls) to play dirty?"

She also questioned how Rigsby could not have known the girls were underage after meeting one and being told the other was a classmate.

The Gazette is withholding the girls' names because the paper does not name people alleged to have been victims of sex crimes.

One of the girls testified that she first met Rigsby through her MySpace page. They agreed to meet at the Chapel Hills Malls in August 2007. She testified that the conversation was nonsexual but that he did buy her a sexual aid.

They never met again after that but continued to exchange text messages. That girl then gave Rigsby's phone number to a 14-year-old classmate.

The second girl's father testified that he discovered the text messages while examining the cell phone, a routine he established as a rule in their household.

Earlier this year, the 4th Judicial District Attorney's office investigated a case in which two teenagers at Air Academy High School exchanged images of themselves having consensual sex. The boy was 17 and the girl was 15.

In April, District Attorney Dan May declined to file charges in that case.

At the time, May said investigators would consider such incidents, sometimes called "sexting," on a case-by-case basis.

May said they would consider the ages of those involved, the nature of the images, whether they were distributed and if "malicious actions" had occurred.