A Powell Judge Named David Kellett, Then Tried to Hide Him, and Doubled the Bond on 11 Felony Counts

David A. Kellett’s name was supposed to stay off the page for eight days. On December 15, 2025, Circuit Judge Joey Darrah said the defendant’s name out loud in Powell Circuit Court, then ordered the Powell Tribune and anyone else in the room not to publish it. The order died on December 23, when Darrah found probable cause and sent 11 felonies to Park County District Court. By then the 56-year-old information-technology owner, disabled military veteran, and two-time Republican candidate for Wyoming House District 25 was already the defendant the town could not un-hear. The charges are accusations. They are not a conviction. The AEGIS Alliance is not going to treat a charging sheet as a sentence.

The sheet is still the public record. Park County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ericka Smith filed an amended complaint on December 23: one count of felony child abuse, one count of aggravated child abuse, and nine counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Cowboy State Daily did the statutory arithmetic. Felony child abuse carries up to 10 years and a $10,000 fine. Aggravated child abuse carries up to 25 years and $10,000. Each second-degree count carries up to 20 years and $10,000. Run at the ceiling, that is 215 years and $110,000. Judges do not have to stack every count. The ceiling is what the state wrote down, not what a jury has imposed.

A $100,000 recommendation became a $200,000 cash-only lock

Kellett was arrested on December 12, 2025. The case stayed confidential until it cleared the preliminary hearing. At the December 15 appearance he told the court, « I’m just in shock, » and then, « I don’t know what to do. » Smith asked for a $100,000 cash-only bond. Darrah doubled it. « When I weigh all the facts and circumstances, look at the strength of the case, look at a public safety risk, in my mind, there’s a huge flight risk in a case like this, » the judge said, according to the Powell Tribune. Cash only means a signature and a promise were not on the table. It does not mean the affidavit has been tested by cross-examination.

Powell Police Investigator Chris Wallace signed that affidavit on December 12. He wrote that he learned of the allegations on December 3, when the file reached him, and that he interviewed the minor the next day. Charging papers say the alleged abuse had already ended more than a year earlier. It did not reach law enforcement until early December 2025. That gap is the part of the story a campaign biography cannot explain. A delayed report is not proof the report is false. It is proof that whatever happened in that household did not become a police file because a neighbor called on the day it started.

The Tribune’s account of the affidavit, which is heavily redacted in the public packet Cowboy State Daily reviewed, says the minor described abuse that happened many times and in more than one way. Wallace wrote that she described being made to sit beside Kellett while he watched pornography. She described a moment when she fought an attempt to touch her, after which he allegedly yelled and pushed her to the ground. She described a punch to the face. Wallace wrote that he obtained a photograph from that period showing a black eye. Two other people, he wrote, lined up with parts of the account, including a description of Kellett being alone with the minor and a description of what one person called a « horrible porn addiction. » Wallace’s conclusion in the affidavit was that Kellett had caused « substantial mental and emotional injury. » Those sentences are an investigator’s theory. A jury, if one is seated, is the test.

Anyone who needs to report suspected abuse can call local police or the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453. Callers do not have to be certain. They have to describe what they saw. A comment thread cannot do that job.

The political career was already cold

Kellett helped start a local Tea Party chapter in 2009 and pushed, in 2010, for Wyoming’s Health Care Freedom Act. He ran for House District 25 in the Republican primary that year and lost to Dave Bonner. He ran again in 2012 and lost to Dave Blevins. The Powell Tribune reported that he had not been visibly active in local politics for about a decade before this case. He never sat in Cheyenne. The yard-sign version of his name outlived the campaigns. That is why a Powell arrest became a statewide story and then a national social-media exhibit. It is not why the counts exist.

Within days of the first Cowboy State Daily story, posts online folded the booking into a culture-war slogan. One widely shared post treated the charging sheet as proof of a whole political style. That move skips the only question Park County is actually required to answer: whether the state can prove these 11 counts beyond a reasonable doubt against this defendant. Partisan captions do not cross-examine Wallace. They also do not protect a child. They just move a redacted affidavit into a louder room.

There is an older Powell police contact that does not belong in that slogan either. In early 2017, officers arrested Kellett near Powell Middle School after he reportedly stepped into a scuffle between juveniles. Witnesses told police he had yelled and sworn at two youths. Prosecutors charged misdemeanor breach of peace and interference with a peace officer, then dismissed the case about six months later. A dismissed misdemeanor is not a prelude the state has charged in this felony file. It is a reminder that Kellett had already been through the local system once, and that the system had let that file go.

Money trouble is context, not an element of the crime

In a May 2025 GoFundMe post, months before the arrest, Kellett asked for donations and said in an accompanying video that he had lost his money to « a crypto scheme, » that he was going through a divorce, and that he was « barely hanging on. » The Tribune reported the plea as a sign of rough finances. Financial collapse can explain why a defendant looks unstable in a courtroom. It does not explain an affidavit about a black eye, and it does not erase one. Divorce paperwork and a failed investment are facts about a household under strain. Strain is not an element of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor.

The same courthouse has kept moving other files. In August 2026, District Judge Bill Simpson sentenced Guadalupe Hernandez Jr., 22, of Powell, to 12 to 18 years after Hernandez pleaded guilty to two felony counts of second-degree sexual assault of a minor and one count of possessing child sexual abuse material. Five related felonies were dismissed. Simpson accepted the deal « somewhat reluctantly. » That case is not Kellett’s. It shows the docket in Park County does not freeze. It also shows how little the public learns when a file stops generating headlines. As of the last widely published local accounts in early January 2026, Kellett was still in the Park County Detention Center waiting on an arraignment. No broadly circulated report of a plea, a dismissal, or a verdict has followed. Silence is not an acquittal. Readers who want the posture of the case should pull the Park County District Court docket rather than a repost.

What a small-town file asks of everyone else

Powell is not a place where a defendant can be a stranger. He owned an IT shop. He had asked neighbors for votes, twice, and lost. He had asked them for money in May. When a charging packet of this kind lands on a man that familiar, two failures show up at the same diner. One is the rush to convict him in public before Smith has to prove a count. The other is the pressure on a child, and on the adults around that child, to keep a family name intact. Darrah’s short gag order was a clumsy version of the second impulse. It did not survive probable cause. The first impulse is still online.

The AEGIS Alliance has logged the same collision elsewhere: a public role, a delayed report, and a bond set for flight rather than for optics. An El Cajon Bible teacher was booked on 14 counts. A Bethel, Ohio, police chief resigned after a 70-count indictment. A Snohomish County task force arrested 21 men in one sweep and still could not claim the county was empty. Different badges, same structure. Access, then a file that arrives late.

Read Kellett’s case as a charging document with a political footnote, not as a political story that happens to include a child. The campaigns explain the headline. They are not evidence. The IT business explains why he looked like a fixture. It is not evidence. The doubled bond explains what Darrah thought about risk on day one. It is not a sentence. The Cowboy State Daily account and the Powell Tribune report are the cleanest public versions of the paperwork. Anyone with information should contact the Powell Police Department or the Park County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. More reporting on cases like this sits in crime news et U.S. news. Until a plea or a verdict is entered on the record, the honest line is the one Darrah could not keep out of the paper: a former House candidate from Powell is facing 11 felony counts, and the state still has to prove every one of them.