photo by: Mugshot courtesy of KBI Sex Offenders Registry

Ray Charles Atkins Jr. is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

Updated at 1:02 p.m. Tuesday

A Lawrence man convicted of rape in Douglas County District Court was granted probation on Tuesday after a judge suspended his underlying sentence of nearly 13 years. Soon after, the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office announced that it would appeal the judge’s decision.

A jury convicted Ray Charles Atkins Jr., 23, of one felony count of rape in August for an incident on July 19, 2019, in Lawrence. He was 19 at the time and the girl he was convicted of raping was 17, according to charging documents.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the Wichita teen was visiting her sister, a student at the University of Kansas, and after a pool party the sister left the teen alone with two men, Atkins and a man she knew only as “Vonnie,” later identified as Servando Martinez Vazquez.

The victim testified at trial that while her sister was away Atkins forced himself on her and when she cried to Vazquez for help, Vazquez told her “That’s not my problem,” and left the room. The victim said that Atkins then kept her in the room until the sister came home.

During the sentencing hearing Tuesday, the victim had called ahead and told the court that she would not be able to attend until 10:45 a.m. but that she did want to address the court, said Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden. The hearing began at 9 a.m., and senior Judge James Fleetwood declined to delay the proceedings until the victim arrived.

Seiden argued that the court should follow the presumption in the Kansas sentencing guidelines of imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Atkins’ defense attorney, Nicholas David, requested a downward departure in the sentencing. Atkins was facing a maximum sentence of 165 months, or more than 13 years.

David called a clinical psychologist, Gregory Nawalanic, to testify about Atkins’ cognitive abilities.

Nawalanic testified that he had conducted multiple tests on Atkins prior to his sentencing and that he found that Atkins had limited cognitive function. He said the tests with Atkins were initially difficult and that Atkins was annoyed to be there.

“I told him I was there to help and that this was his last chance to get a lesser sentence,” Nawalanic told the court.

He said that Atkins had a limited ability to read the tests and needed to have the same words and concepts explained multiple times.

“It didn’t appear there was a richness of cognition,” Nawalanic said.

The results of the abbreviated IQ test showed that Atkins had a lower than average IQ, and Nawalanic described Atkins as an individual who was “bluffing his way through life.” Nawalanic said that Atkins’ cognitive abilities were on the level of a 7- to 11-year-old’s.

While Atkins scored poorly on his cognitive tests, he did score well on his sex offender recidivism tests, meaning the chance of his committing another sex crime appeared to be on the low end, Nawalanic said.

Atkins spoke briefly at the sentencing, telling the court, “If you give me any treatment or probation, I will complete it.”

The victim did not arrive in time to speak.

Fleetwood, who presided over the trial, said that he was granting the departure because of Atkins’ age, his cognitive ability and Atkins’ family support in the community. About 10 people were present in the courtroom Tuesday to support Atkins. Fleetwood then sentenced Atkins to 155 months in prison and suspended that to five years of probation. He ordered Atkins to follow any sex offender or cognitive therapy recommendations he receives from his probation officer, and he ordered him to have no contact with the victim. Atkins will be required to register as a sex offender for life.

“Mr. Atkins, you’re being given the opportunity to prove yourself over the next five years; take advantage of it,” Fleetwood said.

District Attorney Suzanne Valdez said she was seeking a review of the lenient sentence in the interest of justice and community safety.

“Sentencing is left to the sole discretion of the judge but Kansas law provides a narrow set of circumstances under which the State is authorized to appeal a district court’s rulings,” Valdez said in a news release Tuesday afternoon. “As I had announced in July regarding a case involving the court’s granting probation in a child sex conviction, the State is exercising its statutory right to seek a review of the sentencing decision in the interest of justice for sexual assault survivors and community safety.”

In the July case, as the Journal-World reported, Trey L. Gibson, 20, of Lawrence, was convicted of one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of felony criminal threat after he pleaded no contest to the two charges in April. Judge Stacey Donovan sentenced Gibson on June 28 to 10.5 years in prison, but suspended his sentence to five years of probation.

The charges against Gibson stemmed from an incident in which he was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in the back of his car at gunpoint in January 2021.