An attorney for a former Lawrence church youth leader who faces a sex crime charge is again asking a judge to dismiss the case based on the state’s statute of limitations.

Hatem Chahine, a defense attorney for Christopher L. Cormack, argued Tuesday afternoon in court that Cormack had frequently returned to the state and was legally a Kansas resident from 2003 to 2007, primarily while he attended seminary in California and served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Douglas County prosecutors are relying on those four years to be excluded from the state’s five-year period to file criminal charges under the statute of limitations. He was charged in 2007 for alleged acts that began in 1999.

Cormack, who currently lives in Abilene, is a former youth ministry coordinator at Trinity Lutheran Church. He faces one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child because prosecutors accuse him of having a sexual relationship beginning in 1999 with a girl when she was 15 and he was 28. A jury in 2008 convicted Cormack for having a sexual relationship with the underage girl, but a Kansas Court of Appeals panel awarded him a new trial earlier this year because jury instructions were not specific enough.

Chief District Judge Robert Fairchild in July dismissed an earlier statute of limitations argument from Chahine, but on Tuesday Cormack took the stand and said while he attended seminary in California he kept his legal residence in Kansas, filed income taxes here and would often return for weeks at a time during school breaks.

Chahine argued that even if Fairchild rejected the argument that he was a Kansas resident during the time, Cormack returned often to the state — and he was present in Kansas for more than five years from the date of the allegations, meaning the statute of limitations would have expired.

But prosecutor Amy McGowan said the only evidence that Cormack had traveled back to Kansas those days was a chart Cormack made mostly from memory.

“He was still absent from the state of Kansas for the purpose of the legal issue,” McGowan said.

Fairchild asked several questions during the hearing and even at one point suggested if there’s a dispute about the number of days Cormack was absent from the state, it could be a question for a jury to decide. The judge said he would rule later on the issue.