PIKEVILLE, Ky. Days after a trial date was set in his federal theft and mail fraud case, suspended Pike Circuit Judge Howard Keith Hall is seeking a delay due to the complexity of the case.

Hall was indicted last month on two counts of mail fraud and one count of theft of government funds. He 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.” The mail fraud charges stem from false time sheets that were submitted for the assistant.

Hall 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 now says it will be impossible to be ready by that date.

In addition to having three other trials scheduled around that date and a family vacation scheduled in late June, attorney J. Guthrie True says the case is too complex and has too much evidence for it to be possible to be ready by July 14. 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.

True is asking the judge to cancel the July 14 trial date and set a telephone conference to discuss a “more realistic” schedule.

Neither the prosecution nor the judge has yet responded to the request.