Nearly two decades ago, Richard A. Jones was convicted of aggravated robbery after being picked out of a lineup by witnesses who said he stole a cellphone in a Walmart parking lot in Kansas.

But while Mr. Jones, who maintains he is innocent, was serving his 19-year sentence at Lansing Correctional Facility, inmates told him he looked like a prisoner named Ricky.

That resemblance would eventually lead to his freedom.

Last year, a judge threw out Mr. Jones’s conviction after the original witnesses were shown side-by-side photographs of the two men and said they could not tell them apart. Now Mr. Jones, 42, is trying to get his life back on track.

On Wednesday, he filed a petition in the 10th Judicial District Court of Kansas, seeking more than $1.1 million in compensation from the state — or about $65,000 for each year of the 17 years he spent in prison for a robbery he said he did not commit, starting when he was 25 years old and a father of two young daughters.