photo by: Kansas Department of Corrections

Joshua Clary

A Douglas County jury on Wednesday found a man not guilty in a domestic battery case.

The acquittal was the second for the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office in a single day — a separate jury on Wednesday acquitted a teen of aggravated assault with a handgun — and at least the seventh acquittal in recent months.

A jury of eight women and four men found Joshua Clary, 41, not guilty of one count of aggravated domestic battery, a felony, and one count of domestic battery, a misdemeanor.

He was accused of choking and battering a woman on Aug. 16, 2024. The state had alleged that Clary and the woman were homeless and living in a tent and that Clary became upset when a cat kept him from sleeping. The state alleged that Clary shoved the woman’s head to the ground with a pillow and placed her in a chokehold.

Clary had maintained his innocence, and jurors sided with him after nearly a full day of deliberations. After the verdicts were read in Judge Amy Hanley’s courtroom, Clary shook hands with his public defenders, but he did not leave a free man due to having a parole hold in another criminal matter.

The Kansas Department of Corrections indicates that Clary was convicted of rape, aggravated kidnapping and criminal threat — all stemming from a June 2009 incident in Crawford County. According to prison records, he was released to Douglas County Jail custody in October to stand trial in the current case in which he was acquitted.

In addition to Clary’s not-guilty verdicts, a separate jury on Wednesday, in a rare juvenile trial, acquitted a 17-year-old of two counts of aggravated assault. Wednesday’s acquittals mark at least seven for the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office in recent months. Last month, a jury acquitted a man of gouging a student’s eyes. On Sept. 5, a jury found a young man not guilty of aggravated criminal sodomy against two teens. On Aug. 8, a jury found a KU student not guilty of rape and aggravated criminal sodomy. On July 31, a jury acquitted a man who was accused of an aggravated assault with an ax near a homeless camp on the Kansas River levee trail; and on July 10, a jury found that the state had not proved its case against a convicted drug dealer who was accused in a Lawrence teen’s fentanyl death.