A Sacramento Superior Court jury today convicted a former Sierra Oaks Elementary School teacher on 13 counts of molesting two of his students.
The verdict against Shane Adair Vicars, 28, came in a retrial after jurors in a case last year could not come to a decision.
As a result of the mistrial, prosecutors slimmed down their case and named only two boys as victims. They had presented six victims in last year's trial.
"We were trying to make it cleaner and easier for a jury to come to a decision," Deputy District Attorney Shauna Franklin said today.
Vicars had been a popular teacher in the school's Discovery Club after-school program, until officials responded to parents' complaints that he was taking boys into an equipment shed, showing up at their weekend sporting events and had been routinely taking pictures of them.
Parents of the six alleged victims later said that he had molested their boys, who were between the ages of 7 and 11, sometime during or before the summer of 2008 and through December 2009.
Sheriff's investigators arrested Vicars in January 2010.
Although only two boys testified in the retrial, Franklin said she may put on some of the other alleged victims to testify at Vicars' sentencing hearing.
Judge Emily E. Vasquez scheduled Vicars' sentencing for March 29. Franklin said Vicars is facing a maximum term of 32 years in prison. Vicars' attorney, Michael Chastaine, declined to comment.
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