photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Kalim Akeba Lloyd Dowdell at his trial on Sept. 19, 2023, in Douglas County District Court. Dowdell was accused of raping a woman when she was asleep after the two had spent the evening drinking together.

A Douglas County prosecutor announced Monday that he intends to retry a man in a rape case in which a jury deadlocked last week.

The man, Kalim Akeba Lloyd Dowdell, 26, of Lawrence, is 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 relate to an incident on Aug. 25, 2018.

After a brief trial last week, the jury after four hours of deliberations was evenly split, and Judge Stacey Donovan declared a mistrial, as the Journal World reported. The woman testified at trial that she first met Dowdell that night and invited him to her dorm at the University of Kansas after drinking at a sorority party and a local bar. She said that she was clear with Dowdell while the two were in bed together, before she fell asleep or “passed out,” that she did not want to have sex with him. She said she was later awakened by Dowdell having sex with her. The woman said she reported the incident two years later after Dowdell started showing up at her apartment complex and she feared he was planning to do something to her.

Dowdell was already scheduled in court Monday to have a six-year-old diversion case dismissed. He was placed on diversion in 2017 for a misdemeanor conviction from harassment by telecom device for sending pictures of his penis to a New Zealand blogger in 2015.

The diversion was previously revoked after the District Court ruled that Dowdell did not comply with the conditions of the diversion agreement when an officer asked to search his phone for pornographic material and Dowdell allegedly deleted pictures before handing the phone over, according to court records.

But the Kansas Court of Appeals reversed that decision and the diversion has been pending during the disposition of the rape case. Dowdell’s attorney, Adam Hall, had asked the court to dismiss the pending diversion matter, which Donovan agreed to on Monday.

The state moved to dismiss the charge Monday “without prejudice,” meaning that the case could be refiled and that Dowdell’s diversion was not completed successfully, according to court records.

After the diversion matter was resolved, Donovan asked what the state’s intentions were for the rape charge, to which Senior Assistant District Attorney David Greenwald said, “Judge, we’d like another trial.”

Donovan then scheduled a new trial on Feb. 26, 2024. Dowdell is currently free on a $50,000 surety bond.