FRANKFORT, Ky. — The trial of a Pike County circuit judge has been delayed, after his attorney said the case was too complex to put before a jury this summer.

Howard Keith Hall was indicted by a federal grand jury in Frankfort back in April for two counts of mail fraud and one count of theft of government funds. Following his indictment, he was temporarily suspended from his position by the Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission.

Hall is accused of paying an unnamed assistant when he served as county attorney approximately $440,000 over a 10-year period, despite that assistant performing “almost no work.” He is also accused of claiming to be a partner in that same assistant’s law firm, for which he was paid “distributions” totaling more than half a million dollars over a nine-year period.

During his arraignment May 16, the judge set a trial date of July 14, but Hall’s attorney, J. Guthrie True, later asked for a delay, saying the case is too complex and has too much evidence for it to be possible to be ready by that date.

True says the first batch of evidence he has received from prosecutors contains 3,800 separate documents totaling more than 31,000 pages, and there is still more to come.

Following a telephone conference on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Gregory VanTatenhove agreed to push the trial back nearly four months, to Nov. 10. The trial is expected to last about eight days.