Kansas Supreme Court Justices take their seats to hear oral arguments in this file photo from Dec. 10, 2015.

A Wichita man who has already spent 23 years in prison for murder and kidnapping may be allowed to appeal his prison sentences, even though the normal deadline for filing such appeals has long since passed.

The Kansas Supreme Court said Friday that Shelbert Smith may be entitled to file an appeal now because his defense attorney failed to file the appeal, even though Smith had asked him to.

According to court records, Smith was 16 years old when he pleaded no contest to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery and possession of a firearm by a minor.

But he was tried as an adult and was given life sentences for the murder and kidnapping charges, plus 10 years to life on the robbery charge and 30 days in jail for the firearms violation.

Immediately after his sentencing, Smith reportedly told his attorney that he wanted to appeal the sentences. But the attorney, Max Opperman, advised him to wait until after the district court ruled on a motion to modify the sentence.

Under procedures used in the 1990s, commonly called a 120-day callback, courts could in some cases modify a sentence within 120 days of the original sentencing.

The trial court denied the motion to modify the sentence, and Opperman never filed the appeal as requested.

Nineteen years later, in 2013, Smith, representing himself, filed a motion to appeal his sentence, arguing that Opperman had not followed his instructions. Opperman, however, died in 2009 and therefore was not available to present his own version of what happened.

A Sedgwick County district court denied Smith’s motion, saying the deadline for filing a timely appeal had long since passed. The court also questioned why Smith waited so many years before filing the appeal.

But in a unanimous, unsigned decision Friday, the Supreme Court said there are certain circumstances in which a person is allowed to file a late appeal, and one of those is when the defendant’s attorney was asked to appeal but failed to do so.

However, that doesn’t guarantee Smith will be entitled to appeal. Because the district court threw out Smith’s motion due to its being filed too late, it did not address another important question: whether or not Smith’s testimony about what happened 23 years ago regarding the appeal is credible.

The court said, “the cold record before us only contains Smith’s testimony. Whether this evidence is sufficient to meet Smith’s burden relies in part on its credibility.”

The Supreme Court remanded the case back to the district court with instructions to determine whether Smith’s account is credible before it rules on whether he can appeal.

“A lawyer who disregards specific instructions to file a notice of appeal has acted in a professionally unreasonable manner, and the defendant is entitled to a new appeal without a showing that the appeal would have been successful,” the court said.