HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The 45-year-old Hutchinson area man was arrested on Jan. 27, on a charge of sexual exploitation of a child was taken back to jail after the state requested the bond be increased.
Douglas A. Kennel was arrested following an investigation that began when the suspect had taken an old phone to have data transferred to a new phone. The worker transferring the data saw images that he thought to be child porn.
In court, Senior Assistant District Attorney Steve Maxwell argued that the state has charged him with sexual exploitation of a child and aggravated violation of the offender registration act. This coming after Defense Attorney Ben Fisher told the judge they would waive the formal reading of charges.
Maxwell told the court of the two convictions in Harvey County for aggravated indecent liberties with a child, but also two federal convictions for receipt of materials depicting a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. He also argued that due to the prior convictions, he’s looking at a life sentence with no chance of parole under the aggravated habitual sex offender statute. He asked for a 1-million dollar bond.
Fisher argued that the images in question in this case were found on a damaged disk and that he believes his client had deleted them and no longer had access to them. He also argued that the old convictions are nearly 20-years old and says his client is not a flight risk being well established in the community. He says he posted the bond and has not violated the agreement to appear. He called the bonding schedule in Reno County inadequate.
Magistrate Judge Cheryl Allen after hearing the arguments increased the bond to $250,000. That caused Fisher to then request a preliminary hearing within 10-days as per state statute. The judge agreed that would be done.
She also ordered that he have no contact with any child under the age of 18 and not be withing a thousand feet of any school.
Hutchinson Police Detective Scott Carlton had told us that after the investigation that they found over 4,000 images on the phone’s SD card, which they believed were downloaded from a file sharing site.
The convictions in Harvey County for two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child go back to 1997.
No date was set for the preliminary hearing as of yet, but if the defense gets their way, it will come up later this month.