Was he only legally innocent? Why Kansas denied wrongful conviction compensation
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state's law providing compensation to incarcerated people who were wrongfully convicted doesn't apply if the defendant was only "legally" innocent and not "actually" innocent.
The ruling means that Robert William Doelz won't be compensated for the time he spent in prison, despite his conviction later being overturned because the police officer violated his constitutional rights.
Doelz was charged and convicted of possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute. The drugs were found during a 2013 traffic stop by Leavenworth police. That conviction was later overturned in 2019 when the Kansas Supreme Court found that it was "an unconstitutional warrantless search."
Leavenworth County prosecutors didn't retry the case.
After spending more than four years in prison, Doelz filed a wrongful conviction compensation case in Shawnee County District Court. After a 2022 trial, Judge Teresa Watson rejected the claim, finding that Doelz's conviction was reversed because of the Fourth Amendment violation. She declined to make a factual finding of whether Doelz was actually innocent.
Justice Caleb Stegall wrote for the unanimous Supreme Court, which affirmed Watson's decision.
The court went through the legislative history and found that lawmakers intended to only compensate "those that are wrongfully convicted and later exonerated because of actual innocence."
"This history plainly indicates the Legislature intended to compensate only individuals who are determined to be actually or factually innocent," Stegall wrote. "It did not intend to compensate every criminal defendant whose conviction was reversed on appeal."
The law and the court's interpretation mean that a wrongfully convicted and imprisoned person must prove three things in order to be eligible for compensation.
First, that they did not commit the crime for which they were convicted.
Second, that they were not an accessory or accomplice.
Third — that as a result of the first two elements — that their conviction was revered, or the charges were dismissed, or they were found not guilty at a new trial.
The court said Doelz had no evidence that the prosecutor dismissed the charges because he didn't actually commit the crime, even though he testified that the drugs were not his. While he argued that he is now presumed innocent, the court said that "legal" innocence is "distinct" from being "actually innocent."
Doelz objected that it was "unfair," because he couldn't control that he wasn't retried and thus couldn't get a "not guilty" verdict.
"We take his point to heart — that it is possible a criminal defendant could be both actually innocent and the victim of an unconstitutional search," Stegall wrote. "But the Legislature clearly anticipated this possibility by providing that a claimant can also prevail by demonstrating that a charge was dismissed after remand because of actual innocence.
"Doelz — and similarly situated claimants in the future — would have been free to use the evidentiary tools of this civil proceeding to investigate and present to a fact-finder the motivating reason and underlying facts that sit behind a prosecutor's decision not to continue to pursue charges after a reversal by the appellate courts. But he did not."
More: Why a Topeka man wrongfully convicted of murder isn't eligible for compensation
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas Supreme Court rules legal innocence doesn't mean compensation
