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Carrody Buchhorn

A Douglas County judge said on Monday that he was doubtful that a wrongful conviction suit centered on an infant who died at an Eudora day care could be resolved short of the plaintiff proving her actual innocence in connection with the death.

Carrody Buchhon, 49, filed suit against the state of Kansas after her second-degree murder conviction in connection with the death of 9-month-old Ollie Ortiz in September 2016 was overturned after her attorneys were deemed ineffective.

Then-District Attorney Suzanne Valdez had intended to retry Buchhorn but the case was dismissed in December 2022 when Valdez couldn’t produce an expert to show probable cause that the child had died by homicide. Valdez announced the next month that she would not pursue the case further after a forensic expert determined that the baby had died of natural causes.

The case has been fraught with delays with the most recent being that the state’s attorney, Shon Qualseth, left the Kansas Attorney General’s Office in December 2024. Before departing he asked Douglas County Chief Judge James McCabria to dismiss the suit because Buchhorn’s case was dismissed not because Bucchorn was innocent but because Valdez had dropped the case because she didn’t believe she could prove Buchhorn was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Valdez still believed Buchhorn was guilty, though, Qualseth said. Qualseth was replaced by attorney Gaye Tibbets

In response, Buchhorn’s attorneys, Bill Skepnek and Quentin Templeton, asked McCabria to end the case by summary judgment, arguing that Valdez had shown that Buchhorn was “actually innocent” by securing an expert medical examiner’s report that showed the baby had died of natural causes.

On Monday the parties supplemented their arguments based on a recent Kansas Supreme Court ruling that determined that when the court considers wrongful conviction suits, it is asked to examine whether a claimant is actually innocent of the statutory elements of the crime, not to examine what prosecutors believed when they charged the crime.

McCabria said that the new ruling, as opposed to the wrongful conviction statute, instructed him to look beyond the “charging instrument” or the reasons the prosecutors believed the defendant was guilty. He said the ruling had changed how he originally saw the Buchhorn case as limited to the constraints he had set for the parties.

He said that Valdez believing Buchhorn was guilty but not pursuing the case only showed that prosecutors do not usually take a position that a defendant is ever entirely innocent of all actions related to a crime that is charged.

McCabria said it is likely that the only way to resolve Buchhorn’s case would be to proceed to an evidentiary hearing so Buchhorn can show evidence of her actual innocence. He said he would formally rule for or against summary judgment on March 10 and schedule subsequent hearings at that time.

Buchhorn and her family have filed an additional lawsuit against Valdez, Douglas County’s former coroner, Dr. Erik Mitchell; former Deputy DA Joshua Seiden; the Douglas County Commission; and the City of Eudora, alleging that the conspired to frame her for murder by withholding evidence, as the Journal-World reported.