photo by: Kansas Bureau of Investigation

Trey Lee Gibson

In June of last year, Douglas County District Judge Stacey Donovan gave probation to a 20-year-old man convicted of a sex crime against a child. As she departed from the state’s sentencing guidelines to do so, she noted that she was taking “a very large leap of faith.”

That faith is now being tested as the man, Trey Gibson, of Lawrence, found himself back in court Tuesday to answer for allegedly violating his probation and to face the possibility that he could be forced to serve his underlying sentence of 10.5 years — an outcome being sought by the state and vigorously opposed by Gibson’s defense attorney.

But first a question of jurisdiction must be answered. The question has arisen because the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office promptly appealed Donovan’s sentence of probation — “in the interest of justice for sexual assault survivors and community safety” — and the case is now on the appellate court’s docket, raising issues of what actions a district judge could actually take in the meantime.

As the Journal-World previously reported, Gibson was convicted of one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of felony criminal threat after he pleaded no contest to the two charges in April 2022. The charges stemmed from an incident in which he was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in the back of his car at gunpoint in January 2021.

Gibson was originally charged with rape, aggravated indecent liberties with a child and kidnapping. He received additional charges for sexual exploitation of a child/possessing media of a child under 18 in March 2022, but those charges and others were dropped as part of the eventual plea agreement.

Gibson was also previously convicted of unlawful voluntary sexual relations and sexual battery in Douglas County’s juvenile court and sentenced to a year of intensive supervised probation.

At Gibson’s sentencing, then-Senior Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Vrana argued that Gibson, given his history and the nature of the crime, should be incarcerated.

“How many more must he abuse before he goes to prison?” Vrana asked the court at the time.

Donovan, however, opted for probation, citing Gibson’s young age, mental health history and his network of support. She also said that his experiences as a child played a role in her decision. Gibson’s adoptive father had testified that before Gibson was adopted at age 5 he lived in a family where his birth mother was unable to care for him and his father ran a prostitution service out of the home.

It was not clear during Tuesday’s abbreviated hearing what the alleged probation violation was, though Gibson’s attorney, Cooper Overstreet, and Assistant District Attorney Brian Deiter both alluded to Gibson being fired from his job over allegations of wrongdoing involving interactions with coworkers.

Overstreet argued that the District Court did not have jurisdiction to address the alleged probation violation while the sentencing case was on appeal — to avoid a situation where the court might have to entertain two appeals in the same case.

Deiter argued that the District Court has jurisdiction to find a probation violation and to impose the underlying sentence of 10.5 years, but would lack jurisdiction to create a whole new sentence.

Judge Blake Glover did not make a decision on Tuesday, but rather instructed the parties to brief their arguments by Sept. 1. He then ordered a hearing on that matter for Sept. 13.