Topeka ? A Kansas law permitting prosecutions for libel is the kind of measure for which the United States condemns other nations, proponents of abolishing the law told a Senate committee Tuesday.

The criminal defamation law — under which two Wyandotte County men were convicted last year — makes it illegal to knowingly spread false information about someone. Conviction can bring a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Only a few states still have criminal defamation laws, and last year’s convictions were the first in the nation since 1974. People who believe they have been libeled typically file civil lawsuits rather than pursue criminal charges.

Sen. Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, noted that the United States last year urged European nations to abolish their criminal defamation laws and leave the matter to civil courts.

“No Kansan should ever be prosecuted by the government for expressing his or her political views, no matter how repugnant, irresponsible or outright false-in-fact those views may be,” Schmidt told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The committee took no action and was to continue the hearing today.

Edward Seaton, editor-in-chief of The Manhattan Mercury, testified Tuesday that last year’s Wyandotte County prosecutions “brought ridicule to our state.”

“It was an international embarrassment and it provides legal justification to repressive governments that wield their criminal defamation statutes as a means of suppressing dissent and chilling unflattering reporting,” said Seaton, past president of the Inter American Press Assn.

In the Wyandotte County case, two critics of Mayor Carol Marinovich were charged for incorrectly reporting in their tabloid that Marinovich lived in neighboring Johnson County.

Publisher David Carson and editor Edward H. Powers Jr., whose free publication The New Observer is published occasionally, are appealing their convictions on seven counts of misdemeanor libel.