LAWRENCE — An attorney representing 78-year-old Earl Ray Harris asked the Kansas Court of Appeals to toss a felony conviction resulting from a protest against public employees who were digging a ditch on his land without permission. Reid Nelson, a state appellate defender, said his Crawford County client initiated in March 2019 a lonely but consequential protest of the ditch project. The conviction should be overturned because the law says the impediment must involve a public building, Nelson said. It infringed on freedom of speech and expression in the U.S. Constitution and Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights, he said. “The right to bear arms is not the right to carry a weapon for whatever purpose,” Lohmann said.