Store seeks jury trial on obscenity complaint

Abilene – The owners of an adult novelty and video store accused of promoting obscenity pleaded not guilty Wednesday and requested a jury trial.

The Lion’s Den has been the focus of controversy since it opened in September 2003 in a former restaurant near an Interstate 70 exit west of Abilene. People opposed to the store staged round-the-clock protests, holding signs warning truckers they’d notify their bosses if they stopped there.

In April, Dickinson County Atty. Keith Hoffman filed 10 misdemeanor counts against the store, a month after a judge dismissed a similar complaint for technical reasons. The complaint cites 10 sex toys stocked by the store.

Kansas to participate in sex offenders registry

Kansas will participate in an effort to create a nationwide registry of sex offenders, Atty. Gen. Phill Kline announced this week.

The site, announced last week by U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, is expected to go online within 60 days and to eventually include information from all states with public sex-offender registries.

The idea is to combine information that’s already available into a centralized site. According to Kline’s office, 48 states have such registries.

Kline spokesman Whitney Watson said the information that would be sent to the national site was identical to what’s now included on the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s Web site.

But he said an advantage of combining the state’s sites was that people could easily search to see if someone they knew was registered as an offender in another state.