photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez testifies Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at the wrongful conviction trial of Carrody Buchhorn.

Former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez always believed that Carrody Buchhorn murdered 9-month-old Oliver Ortiz at a Eudora day care in 2016, and an expert’s report saying that Oliver died of natural causes didn’t change her mind one bit, she testified Wednesday at Buchhorn’s wrongful conviction trial.

In fact, when she received the report of forensic pathologist Jane Turner, whom she had hired, Valdez said her first reaction was that she had been given the wrong report.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, right, is pictured Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at the wrongful conviction trial of Carrody Buchhorn, at left.

“Is this about an 80-year-old man?” she recalled thinking about Turner’s report, which said that Oliver had likely died of a heart attack or stroke. Everything that she knew about Oliver was that he was a happy and healthy baby, and that “all evidence pointed to (Buchhorn’s) guilt.”

“I just didn’t buy it,” she told a packed courtroom Wednesday. “I didn’t believe it,” and neither did anyone on her team or others involved in the case, she added, including Mark Simpson, who had prosecuted Buchhorn at her criminal trial and who has since become a district judge in Douglas County.

Simpson was “devastated” by the report, Valdez said. “For prosecutors, you have one or two (cases) that really get to your soul,” she said, “and this was one of those for him.”

Although Simpson was expected to testify on Wednesday, the state, who is fighting Buchhorn’s wrongful conviction claim, did not call him to the stand before it rested its case. Simpson worked for the previous DA, Charles Branson, and tried the case in 2018, three years before Valdez became DA.

When Valdez took office in 2021, Buchhorn’s conviction was already under appeal. A brief had been submitted to the appellate court, and that court’s decision — a reversal based on ineffective assistance of counsel — came down in August of that year. Valdez said she found that opinion “shocking” because Buchhorn had been represented by Paul Morrison, a “top attorney” who had been the longtime Johnson County DA.

“Not only was I shocked, but a lot of people in the legal world were shocked,” she said.

Valdez’s office appealed the reversal to the Kansas Supreme Court, which, via a 3-3 tie, affirmed the reversal. She vowed to retry the case, but said she would not rely on the testimony of Dr. Erik Mitchell, the coroner who had said Oliver died from “depolarization.”

The appellate court had said that Morrison had been ineffective because he didn’t do enough to counter Mitchell’s explanation of the cause of death. Valdez said that the court had “glommed on” to the word “depolarization” for some reason, and she just thought she’d be better off with another expert, even though Mitchell had not been barred from testifying again.

She also said that Mitchell was “wonky” and “strange,” but she didn’t doubt his overall opinion that Oliver was a homicide victim, even as Buchhorn’s attorney pressed her to acknowledge that Mitchell had fallen into professional disrepute. In her press release announcing that she was ceasing prosecution, Valdez referred to Mitchell’s “questionable professional reputation,” but on Wednesday she said that simply referred to the reputation he had in the court of appeals relating to Buchhorn’s case.

Valdez underwent about four hours of questioning Wednesday, including a lengthy cross-examination by Buchhorn’s attorney Bill Skepnek that frequently verged on quarrelsome, especially as Skepnek quizzed Valdez about medical terms, even after she said several times that she was no medical expert.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez testifies Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at the wrongful conviction trial of Carrody Buchhorn. Judge James McCabria is at right.

In the closing summation to Judge James McCabria, Buchhorn’s other attorney, Quentin Templeton, spoke derisively of Valdez for not knowing what “ischemic damage” and “patent foramen ovale” meant because the terms played a key role in the report of Turner, who said that Oliver had a patent foramen ovale (or hole in his heart) that, combined with infection, created the conditions for his death — namely that an infection helped create a blood clot that went through the hole in his heart, causing a heart attack or stroke.

After she received Turner’s report in January 2023, Valdez said she brought Oliver’s family in and explained to them that although she believed in Buchhorn’s guilt, she did not have a provable case beyond a reasonable doubt “at that time” and that it was incumbent on her ethically to cease prosecution, she said. There is no statute of limitations for homicide, she said she told them, and the case could be refiled at some point.

Valdez had a report from a child abuse pediatrician, Dr. Terra Frazier, who testified last week in the wrongful conviction trial, that said Oliver had died from inflicted abuse, not natural causes, but Valdez said she also needed testimony from a pathologist, which led to a lengthy expert search and ultimately to Turner.

In the meantime, Judge Sally Pokorny had dismissed Buchhorn’s case, without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled, after Turner’s report arrived past the deadline, Valdez said.

Valdez said one of the reasons she was convinced of Buchhorn’s guilt, aside from the medical reports, was a collection of “horrific” text messages found on Buchhorn’s phone: obscene names used to describe Oliver and references to “killing a baby” — messages that Buchhorn has downplayed as products of her propensity to use vulgar language.

Another reason Valdez didn’t trust the Turner report, she said, was that Oliver’s mother, a nurse, didn’t believe it.

“She’s a mom, and I’m a mom, and we know our kids,” Valdez said — a statement that Templeton mocked in his summation as unprofessional.

The state rested its case Wednesday following Valdez’s testimony on Day 7 of the trial. Buchhorn’s attorneys then called Turner as a rebuttal witness to counter Frazier’s testimony that Oliver had died from abuse. Turner disputed Frazier’s conclusions and stood by her opinion that Oliver died of natural causes.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez leaves the witness stand Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at the wrongful conviction trial of Carrody Buchhorn. Buchhorn’s attorney Bill Skepnek is at left.

Templeton asserted in his closing that “Turner alone” established Buchhorn’s innocence, which Buchhorn must prove by a preponderance, or 51%, of the evidence. He said Turner had performed 5,000 autopsies and that Frazier had performed zero. Mackenzie Baxter, arguing for the state, countered that Turner, unlike Frazier, was not a child abuse pediatrician and had no expertise in that field.

One issue in the case had been whether Frazier would be admitted as an expert witness, and on Wednesday Judge McCabria ruled that she would be.

Templeton argued that Buchhorn had more than met her burden of proof, citing not only Turner’s testimony, but the absence of anything but circumstantial evidence. Frazier, he said, was just another Mitchell, using the word “dysfunction” instead of “depolarization,” which he called “a distinction without a difference.”

“A blow to the head causing death without causing injury to the brain is a farce,” he said, and the profane text messages are a “bogeyman.” The fact that Buchhorn was the last person with Oliver before he died does not make her a murderer, and the state’s timeline for an alleged beating to have occurred didn’t make any sense, he argued. The fracture found in Oliver’s skull did not happen on the day he died, but several days before, Turner had said.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Gaye Tibbets, an attorney for the state, questions former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at the wrongful conviction trial of Carrody Buchhorn.

Gaye Tibbets, though, arguing for the state, said that Buchhorn did not meet her burden and failed to show that Valdez had dropped the prosecution because Valdez believed in her innocence. Oliver had a skull fracture, which Frazier suggested was more recent, and 16 injuries, that she said could not be explained by resuscitation efforts after he was found limp and unresponsive.

Tibbets also said that Oliver’s heart had been deemed “normal” by other medical professionals, who had not indicated any sign of heart attack or stroke, and she said there was “no evidence that Mitchell had lied.”

Tibbets displayed a selection of obscene text messages — she said there were “reams” of such messages — in which Buchhorn harshly criticized her boss, who owned the day care, and complained of hating her situation, being at the end of her rope and being left alone with crying babies.

Templeton rebutted that “the state’s entire case is Carrody has a potty-mouth,” and he said that Valdez’s actions, not her subjective thoughts about the case, were what legally mattered for showing innocence.

The court asked the attorneys to submit their findings and conclusions in writing to him, and he will render a decision sometime in the new year.

If Buchhorn wins her lawsuit, she will be entitled to around $400,000, or $65,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment. Her petition states that she was on house arrest or in the Douglas County Jail or the Topeka Correctional Facility for a total of 2,072 days, or more than 5.5 years. She has said her main goal with the lawsuit, though, is to acquire a certificate of innocence.

“It’s been 9 years,” she said at the beginning of the trial. “I did not do anything to Ollie.”

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Quentin Templeton addresses the court Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at the wrongful conviction trial of Carrody Buchhorn.