Topeka ? The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday said a novelty store in Johnson County cannot be tried on obscenity charges because the state violated a speedy trial rule that Kansas courts have used for several years.

At the same time, though, the court also said that rule was wrong to begin with and should not apply to any future cases.

Spencer Gifts, located in the Oak Park Mall, was originally charged in May 2010 with 10 counts of promoting obscenity harmful to minors.

Prosecutors alleged the store was selling sexually explicit toys, lewd clothing, posters of nude women and other items, some of which were displayed in proximity to items geared toward children, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle merchandise and Sesame Street clothing.

The charges came after a months-long investigation by the Johnson County district attorney’s office.

The Johnson County District Court issued a summons and ordered the company to appear, but did not require the company to post an appearance bond. But after several years and no further action by the court, the company filed a motion to dismiss the charges, saying the state had violated its own speedy trial statute.

That law says, “If any person charged with a crime and held to answer on an appearance bond shall not be brought to trial within 180 days after arraignment on the charge,” that person is entitled to have the charges dismissed.

The main issue at stake in the case was the exact wording of that statute. It requires two conditions to exist before a defendant is entitled to a dismissal: being charged with a crime and posting an appearance bond. Spencer Gifts had not posted such a bond.

But the district court agreed to dismiss the charges anyway based on a 1988 precedent, City of Elkhart v. Bollacker, which held that the Legislature intended for the statute to apply even in cases in which the defendant did not post a bond, even though the plain language of the statute says otherwise.

That case has been binding precedent on Kansas courts for 28 years, and attorneys for Spencer Gifts relied on it when filing their motion to dismiss the charges.

On appeal, the Johnson County district attorney’s office and Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office argued that the Bollacker decision should be overturned because it goes against a plain reading of the statute.

In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court essentially agreed with both sides, upholding the lower court’s decision to dismiss the charges because that decision was based on binding precedent at the time, but also overturning the Bollacker decision.

That means that in any future case, defendants who have not been ordered to post a bond will no longer be protected by the state’s speedy trial statute.