Wichita ? A Sedgwick County judge on Thursday refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a man who accuses a television station of wrongly identifying him as a suspect in the BTK serial killer investigation.

District Judge Mark Vining ruled against KSNW and its lawyer, Bernie Rhodes, who said the coverage of the Dec. 1, 2004, arrest of Roger Valadez was accurate and therefore not actionable.

Valadez was cleared long before the arrest of Park City compliance officer Dennis Rader, who eventually confessed to all 10 BTK killings.

Craig Shultz, a lawyer for Valadez, argued that even if the televised reports were true, the station had no right to identify Valadez by name, label him a BTK suspect or spend hours outside his home broadcasting live news shots.

“This is not your typical news clip,” he said. “This is eight hours of constant harassment.”

Transcripts of those broadcasts showed a KSNW reporter saying “people around Wichita are breathing a sigh of relief,” and an anchor saying, “I think a lot of people are relieved.”

There was at least one factual error in the reporting that morning, Shultz said. Although the station repeatedly said Valadez was being questioned by police, he said, there was no evidence that his client was ever subjected to questioning.

Rhodes argued that the case should be dismissed because the newscasts were accurate – that Valadez was in fact a BTK suspect at that time. He said the law recognizes a conditional First Amendment privilege that protects inaccurate news stories that are prepared in good faith.

Vining said a jury would have to decide.