CSC suspect receives prison time

MARQUETTE — An Ishpeming man accused of criminal sexual conduct with a 14-year-old girl is headed to prison.

Richard Keller, 25, was sentenced to a year and a half to 15 years in prison in Marquette County Circuit Court Friday morning. The sentence was made as part of a plea agreement in which Keller pleaded no contest to one of two third degree criminal sexual conduct charges he faced.

After reading a statement from the victim, Assistant Prosecutor Andrew Griffin argued that the focus of the sentence should be on punishment rather than rehabilitation. He based that argument partly on Keller allegedly telling agents from the Department of Probation and Parole that the offense didn’t occur, but rather he had accepted the plea to avoid a harsher possible sentence upon conviction.

“If he wants to try to portray to family members that this was all a consensual relationship, he needs to remember that it cannot be a consensual relationship with a child,” said Griffin.

Keller was arrested in August by Ishpeming Police after an investigation into his alleged engagement in sexual penetration with the victim in 2014 and 2015.