$1.3M raised to help man exonerated after 43 years
Kevin Strickland left a Missouri prison penniless Tuesday after serving more than 40 years for a triple murder that he did not commit, but more than 20,000 strangers have donated about $1.3 million to an online fundraiser to help his reentry to society.
He was exonerated without DNA evidence, which disqualified him from being compensated by the state, despite spending decades behind bars, his lawyers said. Strickland, 62, said Friday that the community did not owe him anything for his wrongful imprisonment.
“The courts failed me, and that’s who should be trying to make my life a little more comfortable,” he said. “I really do appreciate the donations and contributions they made to try to help me acclimate to society.”
The online fundraiser, organized by the Midwest Innocence Project, was set up by Tricia Rojo Bushnell, one of his lawyers and the project’s executive director.
Strickland will receive the full amount of the donations as soon as he has a bank account to transfer it into, Bushnell said. The Midwest Innocence Project also will set him up with a financial adviser to help him structure the money and determine how he wishes to spend it.
Strickland was convicted in 1979 of killing three people in Kansas City the year before. The only eyewitness had picked Strickland from a lineup. Strickland was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years.
One of the two other men who pleaded guilty to the murders maintained that Strickland played no part in the killings, and the sole eyewitness later recanted her testimony, Judge James E. Welsh of Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals noted in his decision to exonerate Strickland.
Strickland said he would have liked to receive apologies from top state officials but is not dwelling on it.
There are other life plans to attend to, he said, like pursuing his dream of buying a small piece of land outside of a city.
“I’ll build a small house, a small bedroom, two- to three-bedroom house, have me some chickens and four to five dogs, a fishing pond somewhere close by, a big fence where nobody can get in,” he said. “Just some alone time, some getaway space.”