Rape Trial of a Former Morgan County Pastor Declared Mistrial

Lake News
December 7, 2015

http://www.lakenewsonline.com/article/20151207/NEWS/151209175

Travis Ray Smith in 2010

Moniteau County

The jury trial of Travis Ray Smith, 45, of California, Mo., the man accused of multiple counts related to child sexual abuse and rape has been declared a mistrial by Judge Kenneth Hayden at the request of the defense attorney, according to the Moniteau County Circuit Clerk’s office.

The reason for the mistrial is not immediately known.

Day one of the jury trial began Monday morning at roughly 9 am in Moniteau County. At some point in the afternoon a request for a mistrial was requested and granted. Smith was formerly scheduled to go to trial on June 2, 2014 after the first trial was continued in late 2013.

In September 2012, Smith was arrested by the Missouri State Highway Patrol on charged of forcible rape, sexual abuse and two counts of statutory rape in the second degree in incidents alleged to have taken place in 1998 and 1999. He was also then charged in Moniteau County Circuit Court with statutory rape in the second degree and statutory sodomy in the second degree related to incidents alleged to have occurred in 2005.

In June 2013, the charge of forcible sodomy for deviate sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion was added to the charges filed against Smith. This incident was alleged to have occurred in 1999.

The allegations came from two different women.

Smith’s 2012 arrest came just one year after being acquitted by a Miller County jury on a charge of child molestation that was filed in Morgan County in 2010.

He was once the pastor at First Baptist Church of Stover.

Lake Sun will continue to update this story.