SANDPOINT - Charges against a Priest River man accused of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor are being dismissed, court records show.

The defense and the prosecution in William David Clark's case filed a joint motion to dismiss the charges because of a recently disclosed eyewitness accounts which substantially undermined the allegations.

A Bonner County grand jury indicted Clark on two counts of lewd conduct last year. Clark was accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy in 2013 and soliciting the boy to commit a simulated sex act on his sister.

Clark, 47, pleaded not guilty and was to be tried in 1st District Court this month.

But Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall and Jeremy Featherston moved to dismiss the charges after the emergence of the new eyewitness accounts.

"These witnesses claimed to be witnesses to the father in this matter, who had the children at the time of the disclosure, actively preparing the child to make the allegations, thereby calling the validity of the disclosures into substantial question," Featherston said on Thursday.

Judge Barbara Buchanan dismissed the charges without prejudice on April 13. The nature of the dismissal enables them to be re-filed at a later date, although Featherston does not expect them to resurface.

Featherston said the nature of the charges coupled with very few limitations on re-filing them essentially made it a dismissal without prejudice.

The grand jury also indicted Shelbi Sierra Rhine on a charge of witness tampering for allegedly secreting the boy to an unknown location to keep him from testifying during the proceedings.

Rhine, 30, pleaded not guilty to the felony offense and is scheduled to be tried in May.