A Brady man faced up to two years in prison after a jury found him guilty of a felony offense this week, but he was not taken into custody following the verdict.
After a three-day trial this week, Jeffrey Scott Gilseth, 36, was found guilty on Wednesday of encroaching on custody at the state penitentiary.
Because Gilseth elected to be convicted by a jury rather than the judge, members of the same jury began hearing testimony Wednesday during the sentencing phase, Bell County court records show.
On Thursday afternoon, the jury returned again with a verdict on the sentence.
“The jury recommended that the defendant serve two years in prison and serve the sentence on probation,” Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza emailed the Herald Thursday. “The judge (Steve Duskie) will determine the terms of parole, including the length of parole, on August 28. Should the defendant violate his probation terms, the judge would have the option to send the defendant to state prison for a period of up to 2 years.”
In 2019, Gilseth was released from the Bell County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.
After being installed in the 426th Judicial District Court Monday, the jury heard seven witnesses for the state before retiring to deliberate Wednesday.
Gilseth and his wife Maria Gilseth, 36, were each charged on May 15, 2019 with interference with child custody. The Gilseths were taken into custody by U.S. Marshals in Kansas on February 27, 2019 after fleeing a court-supervised visit with their three sons on February 21, 2019.
The Gilseths previously told the Herald that they believed their children – who had been removed from the couple’s care following an allegation of family abuse – were being abused in foster care. Jeffrey Gilseth was found not guilty by a McCulloch County jury in 2019 on charges of assault.
“We took the boys to protect them,” Jeffery Gilseth told the Herald on Aug. 30, 2019. “We begged CPS to get the boys out of the house, but they didn’t do anything.”
He said that no violence was used in the incident and that he “never felt angry or hostile” during the encounter with the woman who had just overseen her visit.
This woman told police “…that Mrs. Gilseth said something like ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and called her children over to her,” said Angela Mathews, a Killeen-based Special Victims Unit investigator, at a bond hearing on March 19, 2019.
After the children were with their mother, Jeffery Gilseth stood between the supervisors and his wife and children so they could leave, Mathews said.
Jeffery Gilseth said he owned two handguns, but they were unloaded and buried in the trunk.
Court filings show a jury trial in the Maria Gilseth case was scheduled for Monday but has been postponed to another date. Her lawyer has also filed a motion to dismiss the case against her on the grounds that a speedy trial will not take place, but a judge has not yet issued an order.
Garza declined to say whether the state would argue against the motion to dismiss.
“Maria Gilseth’s case is pending,” he said.
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