Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline heads into an ethics hearing, Tuesday, July 19, 2011, in Topeka. The state Board for Discipline of Attorneys is examining allegations of professional misconduct stemming from his past investigations of abortion providers, which he strongly disputes.

Topeka ? Former Kansas prosecutor Phill Kline prepared to defend himself Wednesday before a state ethics panel against an allegation that he and his subordinates misled a grand jury as it investigated a Kansas City-area abortion clinic.

Kline was to begin testifying before a three-member panel of the Board for Discipline of Attorneys after the office pursuing a professional misconduct complaint against him finished presenting its case. The complaint stems from Kline’s investigations of abortion providers as Kansas attorney general from 2003 to 2007 and as Johnson County district attorney in 2007 and 2008.

The complaint, filed by the state’s attorney disciplinary administrator, alleges Kline and his subordinates mishandled abortion patients’ medical records and misled other officials to further their investigations of abortion providers, including a Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park. Kline strongly disputes the allegations.

The panel already had eight days of hearings in February and March before resuming them this week. The latest proceedings have focused on the allegation about the grand jury in Johnson County that investigated the Planned Parenthood clinic in late 2007 and early 2008 but never issued an indictment.

The ethics panel hoped to wrap up its hearings this week; it will recommend to the state Supreme Court whether Kline should face sanctions for his conduct. The court — which has the final say and can strip Kline of his state law license — already has criticized him in decisions in abortion cases.

The allegation against Kline about the grand jury came from the leading juror, Stephanie Hensel, who has testified that she still believes Kline and the district attorney’s office gave the jurors misleading information. Testimony has showed that the district attorney’s office had a strained relationship with Hensel and attorneys retained by the grand jury, which didn’t rely exclusively on the DA’s office for legal advice.

Kline and his supporters have said repeatedly outside the hearing that the complaint against him is politically motivated and they don’t see the disciplinary process as fair. Kline strongly disputes that patient records were mishandled or that he or subordinates misled other officials.

“Here we are, again, for days on things that should have been disposed of long before this,” Kline told reporters during one break in the hearings.

Kline, an anti-abortion Republican, gained national attention for investigating abortion providers, but he was voted out of both the attorney general’s and county prosecutor’s offices. He’s now a visiting assistant law professor at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., founded by evangelist Jerry Falwell.

Kline was appointed to the Johnson County district attorney by fellow Republicans to fill a vacancy after losing his race for re-election in 2006 to an abortion rights Democrat.

In October 2007, Kline filed 107 criminal charges against the Planned Parenthood clinic, alleging it falsified documents and performed illegal abortions, which it strongly denies. That case — delayed by legal disputes over the handling of patient records and Kline’s conduct — is pending. A preliminary hearing to determine whether the case goes to trial is scheduled for Oct. 24-26.

But even as Kline filed those charges in 2007, anti-abortion groups used petitions signed by voters to force Johnson County to convene a grand jury to investigate the same clinic on multiple issues, including whether it had reported cases of children being sexually abused to the state, as required by Kansas law.

Hensel testified Tuesday that Kline and the district attorney’s office gave the grand jury incomplete and misleading information about what Kansas law required — withholding information that helped lead jurors to conclude the law hadn’t been violated. Kline said he and his subordinates gave the grand jury accurate information.