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Kevin Strickland at a Kansas City court hearing in early November: "Joy, sorrow, fear"
Photo: Tammy Ljungblad / AP
In 1979, Kevin Strickland was sentenced to life imprisonment for multiple murders in Kansas City.
An all-white jury found the African American guilty.
Now a judge in the US state of Missouri has ordered the immediate release of the 62-year-old.
Strickland was convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of an eyewitness who later retracted her testimony, so the reasoning.
The guilty verdict is therefore not tenable.
"I think I've developed emotions you all don't know about," Strickland said as he left Cameron prison.
“Joy, sadness, fear.
I'm trying to figure out how to bring these emotions together. "
In the future, he wants to work to ensure that someone else doesn't have to experience the same thing as him, says Strickland.
The criminal justice system must be "torn down and rebuilt".
Witness urged to testify by the police?
Most recently, the responsible public prosecutor's office had also come to the conclusion that Strickland was innocent.
"To say that we are extremely pleased and grateful would be an understatement," said prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
"It finally brings justice to a man who has suffered tragically for so long because of a false conviction."
Strickland was found guilty of the murders of Larry Ingram, 21, John Walker, 20, and Sherrie Black, 22.
The verdict was based largely on the testimony of eyewitness Cynthia Douglas, the sole survivor of the April 25, 1978 incident.
The witness, who died in 2015, initially identified Strickland as one of four men who shot.
However, she later expressed doubts and said she had been pressured to give evidence by the police.
ala / AP
