photo by: Chris Conde/ Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured in September 2018.

A Douglas County District Court judge on Tuesday refused to delay a December trial for a man who is defending himself in a child sex crime case.

Dustyn Dwayne Polk, 47, of Lawrence, is set to stand trial on Dec. 12. He faces two counts of rape, three counts of aggravated criminal sodomy and one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a girl under the age of 14 — all of which are off-grid felonies that could result in a life sentence, according to Kansas sentencing guidelines.

The alleged incidents occurred over a three-year period beginning in 2015 when the girl was 10 and continued until 2018. When questioned by police about the abuse, Polk told investigators that he didn’t remember doing it but if the victim said he did then he must have, according to an affidavit in support of his arrest.

Polk was arrested in August of 2018 and has since dismissed multiple appointed defense attorneys citing “ineffective counsel” — motions that have prolonged the case over the four years he has been in jail. On Tuesday, he requested a continuance for his approaching trial and told the court he was still unprepared, to which Judge Sally Pokorny said Polk has had plenty of time to prepare and that his lack of legal knowledge was to blame.

“This goes straight to the issue of you not being able to effectively represent yourself. Look at how this case has not gone well for you since you took over,” Pokorny said.

Pokorny denied the continuance but said that if Polk chooses to turn the case over to his standby counsel, defense attorney Carol Cline, then she would consider delaying the trial to give the qualified attorney time to prepare. As standby counsel, Cline can offer advice to Polk about legal procedures when he asks for it but it isn’t Cline’s job to “teach Polk how to be an attorney,” Pokorny said.

Pokorny also denied Polk’s motions to reconsider the warrants that police used to search Polk’s residence and cellphone. She said she had already ruled on those motions in the past, but Polk argued that the motions had been decided when he was represented by ineffective counsel. After listening to Polk’s new arguments about the warrants, Pokorny’s ruling did not change.

Polk was granted the right to represent himself in April of 2022, according to court records.

As previously reported by the Journal-World, Polk was charged in October 2021 with additional sex crimes related to a second victim. He is charged with one count of aggravated criminal sodomy of a child, two counts of indecent liberties with a child and one count of indecent solicitation of a child, according to charging documents. The incidents are alleged to have occurred in 2009-2010. The woman, now 28, accused Polk during a preliminary hearing in August of “grooming, molesting, then raping” her when she was 15 years old.

Polk is currently being held in the Douglas County Jail on a $550,000 bond. He is scheduled for trial in his 2018 case on Dec. 12, and a trial is set in the 2021 case for Jan. 30, 2023, according to court records.