District Court: Seematter placed under "house arrest"

By Brian Sanders
A Wetmore resident charged with exposing himself to two minor children in Hoyt will be placed under "basically a house arrest" with his parents, Jackson County District Court Judge Micheal Ireland said Thursday during a hearing.
Jason A. Seematter, 24, charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior in connection with an alleged Sept. 27 incident in front of Royal Valley Elementary School, also was granted a bond reduction by Ireland at the request of his attorney, Russell Roe of Onaga. Seematter, who had been held on $25,000 bond, saw his bond reduced to $10,000 cash or commercial surety.
Roe had asked for a reduction to $2,500, but Jackson County Attorney Shawna Miller recommended leaving the bond alone and asking Ireland to make sure Seematter has no contact with anyone under 18 years of age. Ireland agreed with the second request, ordering Seematter to stay 50 yards away from all minors and adding electronic monitoring as conditions of his bond.
"Based upon the allegations in this case, I want to make sure that if it's two o'clock in the morning, he's where he needs to be," Ireland said before ordering Seematter back to district court at 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 13 for a preliminary hearing.
The charges against Seematter stemmed from the alleged incident in which he reportedly exposed himself to two nine-year-old girls who reportedly live in Hoyt, prompting the girls to run from the scene and report it. Miller said Thursday that the incident "caused a lot of people quite a bit of pain."
Information provided to law enforcement led to Seematter's arrest on Oct. 1 at his home in Wetmore, and he was held at the Jackson County Detention Center prior to Thursday's hearing. The hearing was an extension of a preliminary hearing originally scheduled for Oct. 9, when Seematter appeared in court without an attorney, and Ireland appointed Roe to defend him.
Roe asked Ireland to continue Thursday's hearing for "a couple more weeks" in order to review the case further, prompting the Nov. 13 hearing date. He also asked Ireland to allow Seematter to be placed under house arrest with his parents, who live north of Hoyt.
Kansas state law classifies lewd and lascivious behavior in the presence of a person under the age of 16 as a severity level 9 person felony. It was reported that if convicted, Seematter could face a prison sentence of five to 17 months and would have to register as a sex offender.