MO. MAN JAILED 40 YEARS EXONERATED AND FREED
A Kansas City man who was jailed for more than 40 years for three murders was released from prison Tuesday after a judge ruled that he was wrongfully convicted in 1979.
Kevin Strickland, 62, has always maintained that he was home watching television and had nothing to do with the killings, which happened when he was 18 years old. He learned of the decision when the news scrolled across the television screen as he was watching a soap opera. He said inmates began screaming.
“I’m not necessarily angry. It’s a lot. I think I’ve created emotions that you all don’t know about just yet,” he told reporters as he left the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron. “Joy, sorrow, fear. I am trying to figure out how to put them together.”
He said he would like to get involved in efforts to “keep this from happening to someone else,” saying the criminal justice system “needs to be torn down and redone.”
Judge James Welsh, a retired Missouri Court of Appeals judge, ruled after a threeday evidentiary hearing requested by a Jackson County prosecutor who said evidence used to convict Strickland had since been recanted or disproven.
Welsh wrote in his judgment that “clear and convincing evidence” was presented that “undermines the Court’s confidence in the judgement of conviction.” He noted that no physical evidence linked Strickland to the crime scene and that a key witness recanted before her death.
“Under these unique circumstances, the Court’s confidence in Strickland’s convictions is so undermined that it cannot stand, and the judgment of conviction must be set aside,” Welsh wrote in ordering Strickland’s immediate release.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who pushed for his freedom, moved quickly to dismiss the criminal charges against him so he could be released.
“To say we’re extremely pleased and grateful is an understatement,” she said in a statement. “This brings justice — finally — to a man who has tragically suffered so so greatly as a result of this wrongful conviction.”
But Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, said Strickland was guilty and had fought to keep him incarcerated.
“In this case, we defended the rule of law and the decision that a jury of Mr. Strickland’s peers made after hearing all of the facts in the case,” Schmitt spokesman Chris Nuelle said in a statement. “The Court has spoken, no further action will be taken in this matter.”
Gov. Mike Parson, who declined Strickland’s clemency requests, tweeted simply that: “The Court has made its decision, we respect the decision, and the Department of Corrections will proceed with Mr. Strickland’s release immediately.”