photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Jordan K. Ross sits with his defense attorneys, Sarah Swain, left, and Cooper Overstreet, right, after the judge reads the jury's guilty verdict in Ross' rape trial Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, in Douglas County District Court.

Story updated at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4:

A Douglas County jury on Monday found a 22-year-old Topeka man guilty of rape after a day of deliberations.

Jordan K. Ross was accused of raping a 15-year-old Lawrence girl at a house party in August 2017. He was 19 at the time. He was charged in January 2018 with rape by force or fear, a level-1 felony. Prosecutors later added the charge of aggravated indecent liberties with a child older than 14 but younger than 16. He was found guilty on both counts.

Despite Ross’ testimony that he never had sex with the girl, the Lawrence police investigation into the reported rape found DNA evidence — Ross’ semen in the girl’s underwear, according to testimony from a Kansas Bureau of Investigation expert.

The jury got the case around 5 p.m. Friday, selected a foreperson and adjourned for the day. It picked up deliberations just after 9 a.m. Monday and returned a verdict around 4:20 p.m.

Prosecutor Alice Walker had argued that Ross’ story was inconsistent in each of three retellings, but several witnesses who had attended the party never changed their versions of events.

photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Left to right, Jordan K. Ross, 22, sits with his defense attorneys, Sarah Swain and Cooper Overstreet, awaiting the verdict in his rape trial Monday, Nov. 4, 2019 in Douglas County District Court.

Ross’ defense attorneys, Cooper Overstreet and Sarah Swain of the Swain Law Office, argued that because the KBI had not tested vaginal swabs from the alleged victim’s sexual assault examination, the state had no proof that Ross had sex with the girl.

On the stand Friday, Ross testified that he didn’t have sex with the girl — rather, he said the girl had manually stimulated him until he ejaculated in the girl’s underwear. In a police interview about a month after the alleged rape, however, Ross said that he did have sex with the girl, but he believed she was 18 until she told him afterward that she was 15.

In her testimony, the girl, now 17, described her recollection of the night of the house party. She said she consumed alcohol and smoked marijuana, then went upstairs to one of the bedrooms to get a break from the party with some friends.

She said the next thing she remembered, she was waking up to Ross taking her pants off, flipping her onto her stomach and raping her. The girl said she remembered her friends banging on the door; some of them testified, corroborating what she said.

Around 10:35 a.m. Monday, the jury requested readback of all of one friend’s testimony. The friend said she was also a relative of Ross’, and she had testified as a witness both for the prosecution and for the defense. The readback took about half an hour.

Ross sat quietly and closed his eyes for a moment after the jury read the verdict. Walker requested that his bond be revoked, given the presumptive prison sentence for the crime.

When the judge said Ross could take a moment in the conference room with his attorneys to discuss his duty to register as a sex offender, he stormed out of the courtroom.

photo by: Mackenzie Clark

Jordan K. Ross closes his eyes momentarily after the judge reads the jury’s verdict finding Ross guilty of rape, Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, in Douglas County District Court. He is pictured with his defense attorneys, Sarah Swain and Cooper Overstreet.

The judge revoked Ross’ bond, and he was taken into custody Monday afternoon. His sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 20.

Swain said Ross has no criminal history. If a presentence investigation finds that to be accurate, under Kansas sentencing guidelines, Ross would face a minimum of 147 months in prison or a maximum of 165 months for the rape conviction — between 12 years and 3 months and 13 years and 9 months.

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The case made national headlines about a year ago when Overstreet attempted to have the case dismissed, arguing that based on Kansas law, “life begins at fertilization.”

Because 16 is the legal age of consent in Kansas, 14- and 15-year-olds are legally unable to consent to sex, according to documents in the case file. Therefore, to prove aggravated indecent liberties, the state does not have to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged victim did not consent to sex — just that sex occurred.

In his motion to dismiss the new charge, Overstreet wrote that a 2013 Kansas law acknowledges for fetuses “all the rights, privileges and immunities available to other persons …” So, if the alleged victim’s age were calculated based on the time of fertilization — approximately nine months before her date of birth — she would have been 16 at the time of the alleged crime. Therefore there would be no basis for the second charge.

However, Douglas County District Court Judge James McCabria shot down that argument, the Journal-World reported.

Walker backed her arguments with an unpublished Kansas Court of Appeals opinion. The Kansas abortion regulation statute defining life beginning at conception was adopted under the public health code and doesn’t apply to the criminal code, according to the opinion. Age is commonly calculated by birth date, and redefining that to equate with “life beginning at conception” would “introduce an unacceptable uncertainty into the criminal law.”