Photo credit, Midwest Innocence Project
Kevin Strickland was convicted in June 1979
A Missouri man wrongfully convicted of a triple murder in 1978 and imprisoned for more than 42 years has been exonerated and released.
Kevin Strickland, 62, has maintained his innocence since his arrest at the age of 18. He was convicted in June 1979.
Mr Strickland said outside court: ‘I didn’t think this day would come.
It is the longest wrongful incarceration in state history, but under Missouri law, he is unlikely to receive financial compensation.
According to data from the National Registry of Exonerations, which has been recording exonerations since 1989, it would also be the seventh longest wrongful conviction recognized in the United States.
On Tuesday, a judge ordered Mr Strickland’s immediate release from state prison, after 15,487 days behind bars.
Lawyers for the Midwest Innocence Project, who have been working for months on Mr Strickland’s release, told the BBC they were “delighted” with the news.
“We were confident that any judge who saw the evidence would find Mr. Strickland innocent and that’s exactly what happened,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said in a statement.
She added, “Nothing will give him back the 43 years he lost and he’s going home to a state that won’t pay him a dime for the time he stole from him. That’s not justice. “.
According to the Midwest Innocence Project, the state of Missouri only compensates acquitted prisoners with DNA evidence, not eyewitness testimony.
Mr Strickland was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years after being linked to the deadly ransacking of a home in Kansas City on April 25, 1978.
That night, four assailants shot and killed three people inside the house: 22-year-old Sherrie Black, 22-year-old Larry Ingram, and 20-year-old John Walker.
A fourth victim – Cynthia Douglas, 20 – escaped with injuries after pretending to be dead. On a hunch from her sister’s boyfriend, police arrested the teenager Mr Strickland and then allegedly pressured Ms Douglas to name him in a line-up.
Mr Strickland told police he was at home watching television. No physical evidence has ever linked him to the crimes.
Photo credit, Midwest Innocence Project
Kevin Strickland as a teenager (right) with his father
His first trial, in 1979, ended in a final verdict, after a black juror on the 12-member jury asked for his acquittal.
At his second trial, an all-white jury found Mr Strickland guilty of one count of capital murder and two counts of second degree murder.
Years later, Ms. Douglas would recant as the sole eyewitness, writing to the Midwest Innocence Project that “things were unclear at the time, but now I know more and would like to help this person if I can”.
Ms Douglas died before she could officially revoke her testimony against Mr Strickland, but her mother, sister and daughter all testified in court that she had chosen ‘the wrong guy’.
Jackson County prosecutors began reviewing Mr Strickland’s conviction last November and – under a new Missouri law – filed a motion seeking his immediate exoneration and release.
“In these unique circumstances, the Court’s confidence in Strickland’s conviction is so undermined that it cannot stand, and the judgment of conviction must be set aside,” Judge James Welsh wrote in Tuesday’s decision.
Ms Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the procedure had “shown how incredibly difficult it is for the system to correct an error”. The prosecutor found Mr Strickland innocent and it still took months. It shouldn’t be that hard.”