RENO COUNTy— A Kansas man sentenced to over 19 years in prison for convictions of electronic solicitation and violation of the offender registration act has lost his appeal.

The Kansas Court of Appeals Friday affirmed the conviction for 59-year-old Steven Peterman of Hutchinson.  Police arrested him on Feb. 12, 2014, when he was waiting to pick up an underage girl in the parking lot of the Hutchinson Mall.

He was convicted of texting via cell phone with a Reno County Sheriff Detective who posed as the 15-year-old. He went to the mall to pick her up with the intention of assisting her in running away from home, but also to teach her sex.

In his appeal, he claimed that the court erred in not allowing at trial his theory that he was entrapped by law enforcement. The state argues that there was no entrapment.

Peterman received the large sentence because of his prior criminal history.

He had served time earlier for two counts of attempted rape and electronic solicitation of a child from a case in 2001. In fact, during the trial in the 2014 case, Judge Trish Rose read details of those crimes to the jury as stipulated facts to show that he was required to register as a sex offender.