After spending almost 26 years in prison, a Dallas man wrongly convicted of aggravated sexual assault has filed a lawsuit against the state comptroller seeking compensation for the years he spent in prison. Sources said the man's conviction was thrown out in 2008 when a rape kit test revealed that he was no longer a suspect.

The 59-year-old Johnnie Lindsey-who appeared on the Discovery Channel series, "Dallas DNA"-claims the state owes him $320,000 in compensation for a concurrent sentence he wouldn't have had to serve if he had not been convicted. Papers filed with the Texas Supreme court on Monday claim that Comptroller Susan Combs has failed to abide by state law in compensating him for four of the years he spent in prison.

According to Lindsey's filing, the comptroller has ignored a Supreme Court opinion issued in March this year, which applies to his case. In that case, another exoneree received an additional $1.3 million in compensation for wrongful imprisonment after arguing that the comptroller failed to pay him the additional amount because he served prison time concurrently with another sentence. In his case, however, the he received an additional prison sentence merely because of the original wrongful conviction.

According to Lindsey, his case was exactly the same as the man involved in the March case, but the comptroller treated his case differently. According to his attorney, Combs has not applied the law consistently and still owes Lindsey for a minimum of four more years of his wrongful imprisonment.

Source: Dallas Observer, "Johnnie Lindsey Spent 26 Years Wrongfully Locked Up, But the State Won't Pay For Eight," Brantley Hargrove, August 15, 2011.