photo by: Sara Shepherd/Journal-World File Photo

In this Journal-World file photo from Jan. 9, 2019, Albert N. Wilson takes the stand at his own trial in Douglas County District Court.

A Wichita man who was convicted in a Lawrence rape case and then granted a new trial due to ineffective assistance of counsel is suing the State of Kansas for wrongful conviction and imprisonment.

Albert Wilson, whose case was scheduled for retrial and then ultimately dismissed by Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez in December 2021, filed the lawsuit earlier this month in Douglas County District Court.

Wilson, now 26, was convicted of rape in January 2019 and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. In February 2020, the Kansas Court of Appeals sent the case back to Douglas County to determine whether Wilson was entitled to a new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel. In March 2021, the lower court said he was, but the DA opted to not retry the case and eventually dismissed it with prejudice, meaning charges could not be refiled. At the time, the DA said the matter was being resolved through a restorative justice process.

Wilson had spent more than two years in prison.

Wilson has maintained his innocence and said in the lawsuit that he has suffered “both economic and non-economic damages” as a result of his conviction and incarceration. He has asked the state that he be awarded full monetary relief under the state’s wrongful conviction laws, as well as attorney fees, tuition assistance, health care and other costs. He also requested a certificate of innocence and that all convictions and records in the case be purged from state and federal systems.

The state has yet to file a response to Wilson’s lawsuit.

When asked for comment Wednesday afternoon, the Douglas County District’s Attorney’s Office referred to the statement it released in December, when it dismissed the case.

That statement said, in part: “In keeping with this Office’s trauma-informed approach to criminal prosecution, we sought the survivor’s input and gauged her expectations and objectives. She wanted to address Mr. Wilson directly and to convey to him the impact this entire experience has had on her.”

The statement noted that a retired judge facilitated “a restorative justice session between the survivor and Mr. Wilson,” but what occurred during that session “shall remain confidential.”

The DA’s office said Wednesday that its December statement “is still the State’s final word on this matter.”

As the Journal-World has reported, the alleged victim in the case, a girl who was 17 at the time, met Wilson at The Hawk, a popular bar near the University of Kansas campus. She testified that she was drunk and that Wilson, then a 20-year-old KU student, lifted her skirt and assaulted her at the bar and then walked her to his house a couple of blocks away, raped her, then walked her back to the bar.

Wilson was convicted of rape for the incident at the house, but the jury hung on the incident at the bar.

District Court Judge Sally Pokorny eventually ordered the retrial, saying defense counsel could have raised questions based on thousands of text messages, which had not been used as evidence in the trial, to influence the jury’s verdict.

“It is my firm belief that if a jury knew of the information contained in the 2,000 text messages taken from the victim’s phone, there is a substantial likelihood the outcome of this case would have been different,” Pokorny said.