A Sedgwick County jury has ordered KSN-TV to pay Roger Valadez $1.1 million for naming him as a possible suspect in the BTK serial killings.
Valadez was seeking up to $2 million from Emmis Communications, then-owner of KSN in Wichita, and news director Todd Spessard for coverage of Valadez's December 2004 arrest on minor outstanding warrants.
The jury found that KSN defamed Valadez and its conduct was "extreme and outrageous." It awarded Valadez $800,000 for mental suffering and $300,000 for damage to his reputation.
Valadez was never charged in connection with the slayings, and he was cleared long before the arrest of Dennis Rader, who confessed to all 10 BTK killings.
Craig Shultz, Valadez's lawyer, asked he jury to award $1 for every person who could have potentially heard his client's name on KSN on TV or through its Web site. There are 2 million people in Kansas alone.
"What they did to Roger was shameful," Shultz said.
"The gist of this case is not that KSN had the only bad reporting that day," Shultz told the jury. "I don't think any of the TV stations ought to be proud of their coverage that day. But the rest of them respected this man's privacy enough not to name him."
Bernie Rhodes, KSN's lawyer, stressed that the report's claim that Valadez was a suspect in the BTK case was confirmed by police reports.
"We got it right," Rhodes said. "And he can't win if it's true."
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