photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Kalim Akeba Lloyd Dowdell, left, is pictured with his defense attorney, Adam Hall, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, in Douglas County District Court.

Updated at 6:17 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 20:

A Douglas County judge declared a mistrial on Wednesday after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case of a Lawrence man accused of raping a woman in her dorm room while she slept on the night they met.

The man, Kalim Akeba Lloyd Dowdell, 26, of Lawrence, was charged in Douglas County District Court with one count of rape of a person who could not consent due to intoxication or because she was unconscious, according to charging documents. The charges are in connection with an incident on Aug. 25, 2018. Dowdell’s trial began on Monday, as the Journal-World reported.

The jury of 10 women and two men spent four hours in deliberations Wednesday before informing the bailiff that they were deadlocked. Judge Stacey Donovan said the bailiff told her that the jury was split evenly, and that when asked if they might reach a consensus if they spent more time deliberating, the jury said no.

During the trial, jurors heard testimony from the woman, who said that she met Dowdell at a sorority party when she was a freshman at the University of Kansas. She said that she invited him back to her dorm after a night of drinking together but that she was clear with him before going to sleep that she did not want to have sex with him that night despite the two having kissed earlier and being in the same bed.

She testified that she was awakened by Dowdell naked on top of her and that he said “I wanted to wake you up with something I knew you wanted.” She said she told him to stop and he refused. The woman said she didn’t report the incident to police right away because it was too intimidating to start the process of reporting a rape.

The woman said she eventually reported the rape two years later after she started seeing Dowdell around her apartment complex and she thought he might do something to her. She sought a protective order and reported being raped to Lawrence police and KU police.

The state rested its case at the end of the day Tuesday, and the defense was set to present evidence Wednesday. However, when the court session began Wednesday, the defense indicated that it would not call any witnesses and that Dowdell would not testify.

In closing statements, Dowdell’s attorney, Adam Hall, said that the woman had decided the sex was rape only because she was confronted by Dowdell’s girlfriend and she regretted that she was involved in Dowdell’s cheating on the woman.

Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald said that the notion that the woman said she was raped because of regret was flawed because the woman reported the rape to two therapists and wrote about the experience in an anonymous blog post over the course of the next two years. He asked what purpose it would serve to tell people unrelated to Dowdell about the incident if the only person she was worried about pleasing was Dowdell’s girlfriend.

Jurors began deliberations around 12:30 p.m., and at one point they asked the court to clarify what the “legal difference” between being asleep and being passed out while drunk was. Greenwald said that there is no difference from a legal standpoint, and Hall agreed, but they also asked Donovan to tell the jury to refer back to the jury instructions they had already been given, which Donovan did.

After Donovan declared the mistrial, she scheduled a hearing in the case on Monday, Sept. 25, where the court will return evidence to the parties and the state will declare whether it intends to retry the case.

Dowdell already had a court date set for Monday in connection with a misdemeanor case from 2015, where he was accused of sexually harassing a New Zealand blogger by sending her nude photos but was granted a diversion. The court revoked that diversion after it found that he did not comply with the conditions of the diversion agreement; according to court records, an officer asked to search his phone for pornographic material and he allegedly deleted pictures before handing the phone over. Dowdell’s diversion was reinstated after he appealed the district court’s decision and the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed it.

Hall has filed a motion to dismiss the misdemeanor case, arguing that the diversion term expired years ago, and that motion is expected to be discussed at Monday’s hearing.

Dowdell is currently free on a $50,000 surety bond.