photo by: Contributed

Carrody Buchhorn

A former Douglas County district attorney and her deputy are immune from a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a woman whose conviction for killing a baby was overturned, a judge ruled.

Carrody Buchhorn, of Lawrence, claimed that the two attorneys — Suzanne Valdez and Joshua Seiden — fabricated a knowingly false cause of death for 9-month-old Oliver Ortiz, maliciously prosecuted her and withheld exculpatory evidence, among other claims.

Judge Kathryn Vratil, however, in a ruling Wednesday, found that Valdez and Seiden had absolute prosecutorial immunity regarding some claims and qualified immunity regarding others. The two have now been dismissed from the case stemming from Oliver’s September 2016 death at the Eudora day care where Buchhorn worked.

Vratil also dismissed Buchhorn’s claims against the City of Eudora and some of her claims against a coroner and Douglas County.

She overruled other motions to dismiss, however, keeping those parts of the case alive. Namely, with respect to former coroner Erik Mitchell, she declined to dismiss the counts alleging that Mitchell withheld and suppressed exculpatory evidence, engaged in malicious prosecution and other matters.

Vratil also declined to dismiss Buchhorn’s claims that Douglas County deprived Buchhorn and her family of their constitutional right to familial association, and her claim of municipal liability.

The counts that Vratil did not dismiss will move forward in the lawsuit, filed in December 2024 on behalf of Buchhorn and her family by attorney Bill Skepnek and others.

By the time Buchhorn’s murder conviction was eventually reversed, she had spent more than five years incarcerated in some form — either in jail, in prison or under house arrest.

Skepnek claimed that Mitchell, who had a documented history of unethical conduct in New York before moving to Kansas, wholly invented a theory of “depolarization” to explain Oliver’s death, claiming that Oliver’s head had been stomped on by Buchhorn, even though there was no sign of brain trauma. Mitchell’s testimony became so discredited that Valdez said she would not use it in a retrial.

Buchhorn’s case was originally tried by former DA Charles Branson’s office, and it was later overturned due to ineffective assistance of counsel by Buchhorn’s trial attorneys. Valdez appealed the appellate court’s ruling to the Kansas Supreme Court and lost, but she vowed to retry Buchhorn. Eventually a Douglas County judge dismissed the case in December 2022, citing Valdez’s failure for more than a year to produce an expert regarding Oliver’s cause of death.

Valdez shortly thereafter dropped the case, citing a report by a forensic pathologist declaring that Oliver had died of natural causes — specifically a congenital heart defect — not abuse.

Despite that finding, after Buchhorn sued for wrongful imprisonment, Valdez and Seiden asserted that the case was open and that they had what the suit refers to as “secret evidence” of guilt — evidence hinted at publicly but never disclosed.

Buchhorn’s wrongful-conviction lawsuit is pending in Douglas County District Court. In that case — scheduled for a bench trial in October — she is seeking about $400,000 in compensation, plus attorney fees.