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Since the age of 18 he has been claiming his innocence.
After 42 years in prison, he is acquitted of murder
62-year-old Kevin Strickland was released after 15,487 days behind bars, following his false conviction for a triple murder in 1978 - based on one dubious testimony and a retrial in which the jury was all white.
The witness returned to her, and after a long struggle, he wins.
"I did not believe this day would come"
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United States
Missouri
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Wednesday, 24 November, 2021, 10:43
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He said he watched TV at his home at the time of the murder.
Strickland (Photo: AP)
A 62-year-old inmate in the state of Missouri in the United States is charged with triple murder and was released from prison yesterday (Tuesday) after 42 years.
Kevin Strickland has claimed his innocence since his arrest after the 1978 murder, when he was 18. "I did not believe this day would come," he said outside court, ordering his immediate release after 15,487 days behind bars.
This is the longest false imprisonment in Missouri history, but by law in the conservative state, there is little chance that he will receive compensation.
According to the National Credits Registry, which has been registering since 1989, this is the seventh longest false imprisonment in the history of the United States, as far as is known.
Lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project, who worked for months for Strickland's release, said they were "enthusiastic" about the news of his release.
"We were confident that any judge who saw the evidence would find that Strickland was innocent and that is exactly what happened," the organization's director, Tricia Ruacha Bushnell, said in a statement.
She added: "Nothing will give him back the 43 years he lost and he is returning home to a country that will not pay him a cent for the time she stole from him. It was not justice."
According to the organization, Missouri only compensates inmates acquitted through DNA evidence, not by eyewitness testimony.
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To the full article
"Nothing will give him back the 43 years he lost."
Strickland (right) next to his father (Photo: Official Website, MIDWEST INNOCENCE PROJECT)
Strickland was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years, following his conviction for involvement in a fatal robbery at a home in Kansas City on April 25, 1978. That night, four assailants shot three people inside the home: Bashri Black, 22, Larry Ingram, 22, And John Walker, 20. Cynthia Douglas, 20, was injured in the incident but managed to survive after pretending to be dead.
According to the gut feeling of a friend of her sister, police arrested Strickland and then, according to reports, she pressured Douglas to select him from the line of suspects. Strickland claimed during his police interrogation that he was at his home and watching television at the time of the murder, and no physical evidence ever linked him to the incident.
His first trial in 1979 ended with a hanging jury, after one black jury out of 12 members was enough to win it. However, in his second trial the jury was composed solely of bricks, and convicted Strickland of one count of aggravated murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
"It should not be so difficult"
Years later, Douglas would retract her testimony, and she turned to the Midwest Innocence Project and wrote that "things were not clear then, but now I know more and would be happy to help this person if I can."
She died before she could officially return from her testimony against Strickland, but her mother, sister and daughter all testified in court that she chose the "wrong guy."
Jackson County prosecutors began re-examining Strickland's conviction last November, and under a new Missouri law they filed a motion calling for his immediate acquittal and release.
"In these unique circumstances, the court's confidence in Strickland's conviction is so shaken that it does not last, and the verdict should be overturned," Judge James Walsh wrote in his decision yesterday.
Rucho said the process "proved how difficult it is for the system to correct the mistake. The prosecutor agreed that Strickland is innocent and it still took months. It should not be that difficult."
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