A jury today cleared a former group-home worker of most of the abuse charges against him and failed to reach a verdict on the remaining counts. Jurors deliberated for four hours in District Court before finding Dustin D. Taylor, 21, not guilty of six counts and failing to reach a verdict on the other two. He was charged with abusing a mentally disabled man last summer at Ponderosa House, a group home operated by Community Living Opportunities.”We thought all along that the state didn’t have a strong case and that his conduct was not worthy of charges,” said Paul Davis, Taylor’s attorney. “What happened really was an employee that was trying to do a difficult job and doing the best he could under some difficult circumstances.”Prosecutors alleged Taylor abused the 57-year-old man in two separate incidents last summer.¢ Jurors found Taylor not guilty of all charges related to a June 17, 2005 incident in which prosecutors alleged he failed to use a “gait belt” to lift the man off the ground. Taylor testified he wasn’t trained to use the belt. ¢ Jurors found Taylor not guilty of two charges related to a June 28, 2005 incident in which he allegedly lifted the man from a chair by his armpits and squeezed his cheeks together. They failed to reach a verdict on two of the counts related to that incident.Even though there were only two incidents, jurors had eight total charges to consider. In each incident, they could have found him guilty of one of four things: battery, or one of three types of “mistreatment of a dependent adult.”The case was prosecuted by the Kansas Atty. Gen.’s office. It’s not yet known whether the office will seek a new trial for the charges on which a jury couldn’t decide– in part because there may be double-jeopardy concerns. Judge Michael Malone asked Deputy Att. Gen. Rex Beasley whether his office wanted to try the case again, assuming it legally could.”I’m not in a position to answer that,” Beasley said.Contributed by Eric Weslander.