Two inmates in Missouri, two tales of justice delayed

Once an innocent person is entangled in the criminal justice system, it’s damningly difficult to wrench them free.

My city, Kansas City, is in the glaring media spotlight currently because of such a case.

Kevin Strickland, 62 has served time for three 1978 murders that a widening swath of legal experts believe he did not commit. He was 19 when he was convicted.

The state of Missouri, via the attorney general’s office, is fighting Strickland’s release at every turn. Despite a key witness reportedly attempting to recant her ID of Strickland. Despite the insistence of his innocence by others involved in the case. And despite the current county prosecutor’s investigation and declaration that Strickland is innocent.

But if Strickland’s story isn’t embarrassing enough, there is a lesser-known case, one that’s equally damning on Missouri’s commitment to justice.

This is not a story about innocence. It’s one of fairness and humanity.

Bobby Bostic should have walked out of a Missouri prison years ago.

But when a judge sentences you to serve 241 years at the age of 18, for crimes committed at the age of 16, the concept of walking free is swallowed by reality.

Until now. A new law, written to manage the complexities of Bostic’s case, is allowing him to go before the parole board early in November.

It would be disingenuous to claim Bostic as a juvenile offender simply made some poor choices. He went on a drug-addled crime spree of robberies, targeting good Samaritans delivering gifts to impoverished families in St. Louis.

He committed serious crimes, threatening the victims with a gun. But the bullet fired, thankfully only grazed a man. No one was murdered. No one was even seriously injured, at least not in the outward physical sense. The trauma he and his older accomplice inflicted could very well have caused lifelong complications of PTSD. Especially for the woman they kidnapped, and whom the older man sexually assaulted.

At Bostic’s sentencing, now retired judge Evelyn Baker tossed a verbal bullet. She told the young man he’d “die in the Department of Corrections.” Baker regrets the remark and the judicial ignorance that caused her to pile on years of time. She’s admitted to many in the media that back then, she judged the crimes of the child before her as if he was already an adult.

We now know that a 16-year-old boy’s brain is not fully developed. Conversely, that reason for leniency at a juvenile’s sentencing, also begs to consider Bostic’s capacity for rehabilitation.

The ACLU of Missouri has helped spread the word, not only to Bostic’s case, but to the changes necessary to the law and attitudes so that his situation won’t be repeated.

Somehow, the secret sauce of just the right amount of media attention, the building of political and social pressure has just never coalesced around Bostic.

At 42 years old, Bostic has served longer than many people who commit far more serious crimes, even murder. That fact alone, deserves scrutiny.

Often, there aren’t legal levers in place to argue a new hearing or trial. Witnesses die. There’s a changing of the guard in prosecutor’s offices and police departments. And always, there are new crimes being committed, the daily hum of violence that absorbs the attention and time of everyone in criminal justice.

Stopping to look backward at those imprisoned under questionable evidence or for unfair sentences is just not the norm.