A former gymnastics coach from Clinton Township found guilty in March 2017 of sexually abusing three girls had his convictions reversed by the state Superior Court on Wednesday because he was tried in Allegheny County instead of Butler County, where some of his crimes were alleged to have been committed.

Keith Callen, 47, was tried at once for two separate groups of charges. The Superior Court decision throws out the charges because only one of their relevant crimes was said to take place in Allegheny County. When prosecutors handled both cases at once in Allegheny County, they denied Callen his constitutional right to a trial “by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

The court ordered both cases remanded back to a lower court for new trials, and vacated the previous findings.

In May 2017, Callen was sentenced to 13 to 26 years in prison.

Documents on the Superior Court filing state that the crimes against two of the victims spanned from either 1998 or 2000 through 2002, but Callen “did not begin to groom” the third victim until 2010.

There wasn't a clear enough connection between the two cases to warrant them being tried together, the court reasoned. The crimes against the first two victims “were completely separate and distinct from his crimes” against the other victim, the documentation states.

The Superior Court wrote that conviction of Callen was warranted in both cases, but that the venue and case-combining errors necessitated the convictions be vacated.