photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Phillip Michael Eravi appears Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Douglas County District Court with his attorney, Angela Keck.

A trial for a Lawrence activist accused of interfering in 2023 with law enforcement is now set to take place in August after a judge reluctantly allowed another in a long line of continuances; however, there’s a chance the case could be dismissed altogether in the meantime.

That’s because the attorney for defendant Phillip Michael Eravi filed a motion to dismiss the case as a sanction on the state for providing “untimely discovery.” The attorney, Angela Keck, had sought a continuance because she said the state had given her 600 files of evidence and subpoenaed 20 more witnesses just seven working days before the scheduled start of the March trial.

She said the state had represented that there was potentially exculpatory material in the files — which the state has a legal duty to hand over — but combing through that amount of material without a continuance would be impossible and would prevent her from providing effective assistance of counsel to her client.

Judge Amy Hanley, with obvious frustration — particularly directed at prosecutor Adam Carey, said she would take Keck’s motion to dismiss under advisement.

“I don’t know where we’re headed with that,” she said, “I have no idea,” while setting a hearing on the matter for June 9.

But she also continued the case to August, saying the parties had left her with “no choice.” While the defense had been responsible for a number of delays in the case, she noted that this final one was due to the state not doing its job.

“It is the state’s job to determine what is relevant and exculpatory,” she said, noting that, based on what she had heard from the parties, “nobody knows what’s on those 600 files.” During the scolding, Carey, who took over from other prosecutors a year ago, said that he had done his best but acknowledged that he “should have sent everything a long time ago.”

Assuming the case is not dismissed in June, it is now set for a five-day trial beginning Aug. 24. Hanley warned the parties that she had no intention of allowing any more time than that, given the nature of the already heavily litigated case – a low-level felony that will be more than three years old by then and that will have consumed an “unprecedented” amount of court time and resources.

At a hearing on Thursday, Hanley told the parties she hadn’t seen anything like the case in her entire legal career and asked, “Is this a serious prosecution by the state?”

Eravi is facing one count of interference with law enforcement in connection with an armed standoff May 19, 2023, between police and a shooting suspect. Police maintain that Eravi, a local activist and frequent public commenter, walked into a perimeter area that they were trying to keep clear because it was in the line of fire from the suspected shooter’s residence. Eravi has denied the charge, saying he had a right to be where he was.