Man enters plea on 2006 robbery at Lawrence convenience store

A 60-year-old man who had won an appeal of an earlier guilty verdict pleaded no contest to a robbery charge Wednesday related to a 2006 incident at a Lawrence convenience store, Douglas County prosecutors said.

Charles E. Smith entered the plea to one count of robbery. Prosecutors had accused him on Nov. 25, 2006, of robbing the Presto convenience store, 2330 Iowa, by pointing something under his shirt at the clerk and making off with contents of the register.

The Kansas Court of Appeals later overturned a jury’s 2007 guilty robbery verdict in the case, and the Kansas Supreme Court upheld the reversal saying District Judge Jack Murphy should have appointed Smith a new attorney for the trial. Smith and his defense attorney Jim Rumsey had disagreements about strategy for the trial.

District Judge Sally Pokorny is scheduled to sentence Smith at 2:30 p.m. June 13.