photo by: Sara Shepherd/Journal-World File Photo

In this Journal-World file photo from Jan. 10, 2019, Albert N. Wilson, 23, is taken into custody by deputies after a jury found him guilty of rape in Douglas County District Court.

A Lawrence rape case has drawn national attention, and the Douglas County district attorney’s office has asked that the victim not be named during an upcoming court hearing because she has reported receiving threats.

The motion, filed this week, cites social media mentions by celebrities and a hashtag used thousands of times.

A jury in January 2019 convicted Albert Wilson, now 24, of one count of rape; the prosecutor dropped a second count because of a hung jury. However, the case is returning to Douglas County District Court soon for a hearing to determine whether Wilson’s appointed counsel was ineffective, and he could get a new trial.

Wilson’s case has been in the national spotlight since he was sentenced in April 2019 to just more than 12 years in prison. His supporters, including many family members and friends from his hometown of Wichita, have held protests and garnered attention from thousands on social media with their cry to free Wilson. Among issues they have cited were the jury — composed of all white people and mostly women in a case involving a young Black man accused by a white teenage girl — and DNA evidence, which did link Wilson to kissing the girl’s chest as he’d testified but was not found on the girl’s clothing or a vaginal swab.

Because of that attention, and because court hearings are being broadcast live on YouTube in lieu of opening to the public as the coronavirus pandemic continues, the DA’s office is asking that only the victim’s initials be used during the hearing.

Assistant District Attorney Kate Duncan Butler and Deputy District Attorney David Melton filed the motion on Tuesday, asking that District Court Judge Sally Pokorny order all witnesses not to use the victim’s full name.

The motion cites Kim Kardashian sharing links to “news articles and petitions that criticize or question Wilson’s conviction,” a website dedicated to Wilson’s freedom, and the social media hashtag #freealbertwilson, which has been used on Instagram more than 950 times, on Twitter roughly 70 times within the past seven days, and by about 1,400 people on Facebook.

“Several of these posts either implicitly or explicitly accuse” the victim of “fabricating the assault,” the motion says.

The woman said she has been threatened since the trial and read posts online that are “generally threatening toward her as the victim, although they do not name her,” according to the motion. “Identifying information about her, including her photograph, has appeared online in the past.”

The motion also says that the YouTube broadcast will allow for wider viewership than in an ordinary case.

“There is a high likelihood of individuals with no direct connection to the case watching the proceedings and sharing their impressions of the evidence online,” the motion states.

District Attorney Charles Branson has said that the case is returning to District Court because of alleged errors on behalf of Wilson’s defense attorney — not the prosecutor, Amy McGowan, the former chief assistant DA who retired in November amid protests calling for her termination.

Still, protesters as recently as last month have rallied outside Branson’s office and called for McGowan’s cases to be reviewed in the wake of an innocent man she’d prosecuted being exonerated after he’d served 23 years in prison.

But Branson said he wants to know where the protesters are for the victim, who was 17 at the time of the incident, when she’s getting threatened and harassed on social media.

“When did we stop believing the victim?” Branson said during a phone interview with the Journal-World following a July 15 protest. “Where’s the outrage that she’s getting threats on this case?”

The special appellate hearing in Wilson’s case was set for Aug. 24 and 25, but it has been continued, tentatively to Sept. 21 and 22. Called a Van Cleave hearing, it is “a mechanism to get what appellate counsel often think are obvious issues of ineffective assistance of counsel back into the district court sooner,” a University of Kansas law professor previously explained.

Among issues that appellate attorney Michael Whalen named in a motion for the Van Cleave hearing were that Wilson’s trial attorney never filed any pretrial motions, nor did he object to a forensic psychologist’s testimony during the trial or consult a DNA expert who could have testified that the evidence did not support the elements of rape.

It was “not a case of overwhelming evidence,” Whalen wrote.

Wilson’s sentence was the lowest end of what’s called for by Kansas sentencing guidelines for rape because he had no criminal history, the Journal-World has reported.

The Journal-World does not print names or initials of sexual assault victims unless they ask to be named.