Paola ? Matthew Limon was scheduled to be in Miami County District Court less than a week after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in his case that the state can’t punish underage sex more harshly if it involves homosexual acts.

Court officials said Limon was set to appear before Judge Richard Smith at 3:30 p.m. today.

His attorney, Paige Nichols of Lawrence, said last week that she would ask the judge to release Limon from Ellsworth Correctional Facility pending further action by the state. Nichols didn’t return phone calls Wednesday seeking comment.

Limon has been in prison since 2000, serving a sentence of 17 years and two months for performing a sex act on a 14-year-old boy. Had one of them been a girl, Limon, then 18, would have faced only 15 months behind bars under a special “Romeo and Juliet” law allowing lighter punishment for teenage sex.

Last month, the state’s highest court unanimously ruled Limon must be resentenced as though the law treated illegal gay sex and illegal straight sex the same.

Both Limon and the other boy, identified only as M.A.R. in court documents, lived at a Paola group home for the developmentally disabled. In court, an official described M.A.R. as mildly retarded and Limon as functioning at a slightly higher level but not as an 18-year-old.

Kansas law makes any sexual activity involving a person under 16 illegal.

The 1999 Romeo and Juliet law mandates lesser penalties for illegal sex when partners are age 14 to 19 and their ages are less than four years apart. As written, it specifically applied in cases where the partners were of the opposite sex.