Topeka ? A Douglas County prosecutor faced a tough crowd Tuesday.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Dan Dunbar stood before the Kansas Supreme Court to argue that a local judge mishandled the 2003 case of a man charged with firing into a crowd of downtown bar-goers. But several of the justices’ questions for Dunbar were about why prosecutors didn’t do things differently in their handling of the Jason A. Tremble case.

The issue in the case is that, last Oct. 31, Tremble’s attorney stood up in court and said his client would plead guilty to all 13 charges against him. On Oct. 5, 2003, Tremble had walked down the street firing bullets into the pavement outside It’s Brothers Bar & Grill, 1105 Mass.

The defense announcement came just as prosecutors in Dist. Atty. Christine Kenney’s office were about to present evidence that some of the victims suffered serious injuries that could have supported higher-level felonies on some counts.

But Judge Paula B. Martin said she was “duty-bound” to accept the plea and wouldn’t let prosecutors change the charges. She also refused to give them a five-minute recess to decide whether to dismiss the case outright so they could refile charges.

“No matter what, that court was going to accept that plea,” Dunbar said.

Because of a quirk in sentencing laws, the maximum sentence Tremble could get based on his plea was about 3 years. He would have been facing about 10 years had prosecutors been allowed to file the higher-level charges.

Chief Justice Kay McFarland asked Dunbar why, given that there were 25 days between the crime and the preliminary hearing, the office didn’t have a better understanding of the victims’ injuries earlier. Justice Robert Gernon asked why prosecutors didn’t get hold of medical reports instead of trying to get all the victims in the same place.

Dunbar cited a combination of reasons in response. He said the case was complicated because there were so many victims, some of whom didn’t seek medical treatment right away and some of whom left the state. He said prosecutors could have begun by charging the higher-level aggravated battery, but he said they were trying to follow ethical rules.

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They only wanted to charge crimes they knew the evidence would support, he said. And they didn’t know Martin wouldn’t let them change the charges.

“We charged what we knew we had probable cause on, knowing there was this remedy at preliminary hearing,” he said.

Tremble’s attorney for the appeal, Randall Hodgkinson, argued it was the prosecutors’ problem, not the judge’s.

“There was never a request for a dismissal in this case,” Hodgkinson said. “They had more than five minutes. They had 25 days to make this decision … We would ask that you find Judge Martin was within her power and her obligation to control her courtroom.”

Arguments lasted about a half-hour Tuesday. The soonest the court will issue a decision is Dec. 3.

Prosecutors initially asked for the court to set aside Tremble’s plea. But Dunbar conceded Tuesday that the court can’t do that because of double-jeopardy concerns and could issue only an “advisory ruling” saying whether Martin was right or wrong.