Dino Cardelli, an Arcata pastor who was sentenced to 18 years of prison on charges of child molestation and intimidation of a witness back in 2011, has been returned to Humboldt County to be resentenced on the orders of a state appellate court. 

Cardelli was booked into the Humboldt County Jail on Wednesday after having been transferred from Valley State Prison, where he is serving his sentence. His resentencing hearing is currently scheduled for Monday at 1:30 p.m. in Room Eight of the Humboldt County Courthouse.

The question at the hearing is a relatively minor one, but it is possible that Cardelli — the former leader of Arcata’s Calvary Chapel church — could have two years knocked off his sentence.

In October, a panel of three judges from California’s First Apellate District ruled that court officers at Cardelli’s original Humboldt County trial misunderstood the amount of discretion available to Judge Bruce Watson when Cardelli was originally sentenced in 2011.

Originally, Cardelli was sentenced to 16 years on counts of sexually abusing two of his adopted daughters and two years for attempting to intimidate one of the victims to suppress her testimony in court. During that hearing, Judge Watson and prosecutor Kelly Neel made statements indicating that the law required that Cardelli serve time for those sentences consecutively, for a total of 18 years, rather than concurrently.

However, the appellate court ruled that Watson had the discretion under law to make Cardelli’s sentence run either way — for a total of either 18 years or 16 — and ordered the court to resentence him. (Read the appellate court’s full ruling here.)

That’s what’s happening Monday. After the hearing, Watson will have the option of either reducing Cardelli’s sentence by two years or affirming his original sentence, this time with full knowledge that either option is within his power. Neel, who spoke with the Lost Coast Outpost earlier this morning, indicated that she felt confident that the original sentence would be upheld. She said that she expected one of the victims to be in attendance and to provide additional testimony if the court requests it.

Cardelli was arrested in Sept. 2010, about six months after the suicide of his wife, Nancy, who — according to testimony from a victim in the case — had become aware of Cardelli’s abuse of their daughters.