A defense attorney contends that her client asked a West Junior High School student only for the time, before police arrested him on an indecent solicitation charge in December.

Sarah Swain, the attorney for Stephen R. Stout, 47, also argues in motions filed this week that the court should not allow statements attributed to Stout to be used in a trial because Lawrence police illegally stopped and arrested him.

Stout, who had Olathe and Parks, Ark., addresses when he was arrested, faces five felony charges because prosecutors accuse him of trying to solicit and lure a 13-year-old student into his car after school on Dec. 20, exposing himself to three other girls and fleeing from police.

Swain has filed four motions to suppress statements and one to dismiss the fleeing and eluding charge because officers were in an unmarked car and not in uniform.

The defense attorney contends that a police officer questioned the 13-year-old girl who said a man in a red car asked her: “Will you please come here and tell me the time?”

The girl said that after the man asked her for the time, the car was meandering around the school. Police and school officials have said the girl joined a group of other students, who then called police.

Minutes later, two detectives told the original officer who responded to the school that they had begun following a car that matched the description. The detectives arrested Stout.

Swain argues that there were no grounds to stop the vehicle because the original police officer had a statement from an alleged victim that the suspect did not say or do anything that warranted an arrest.

Prosecutor Kevin Graham, an assistant Kansas attorney general, has already won approval to introduce evidence about Stout’s 2006 Missouri conviction of misdemeanor sexual misconduct, which also occurred outside a middle school. Graham has until Tuesday to file responses to Swain’s recent motions.

Graham is the special prosecutor because Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson – before he was elected in 2004 – once represented Stout in a 2000 Douglas County exposure case when Stout was granted diversion.

Douglas County District Judge Michael Malone will hear arguments at 10 a.m. Thursday. Stout’s trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 8.