photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Albert Wilson appears at a hearing on Jan. 29, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

A Douglas County judge has ruled against a man who was suing the State of Kansas for wrongful conviction and imprisonment in a 2016 rape case.

Judge Carl Folsom in an order filed Monday found that Albert Wilson, who was convicted of raping a 17-year-old, did not meet his burden of showing actual innocence as required by state law.

Wilson was convicted of rape in 2019 and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. After an appeal, however, Wilson won the right to a new trial when Douglas County Judge Sally Pokorny determined that he had not received effective assistance of counsel at his trial.

Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez in 2021 said that she would not retry the case and dismissed it with prejudice, meaning that it could not be brought again.

Four months later Wilson sued for wrongful conviction and imprisonment, seeking compensation from the state. During the course of that suit, the Kansas Supreme Court released its opinion in the Doelz case, which found that a person in Wilson’s position cannot prevail in his claim for wrongful conviction and imprisonment under the state’s wrongful conviction statute unless he can prove that his conviction was reversed because he was actually innocent or unless he can prove that the state dismissed his criminal case because he was actually innocent.

In Wilson’s case, Valdez, in a March 2025 deposition, said that she did not believe that Wilson was innocent and that her decision to dismiss his case was simply because the alleged victim did not want to testify again and had agreed instead to participate in a restorative-justice process.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Judge Carl Folsom III presides over the Albert Wilson trial for wrongful conviction on Jan. 30, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.