Strickland was quietly watching a soap opera in the Western Missouri Prison yesterday, when a news report suddenly appeared: Kevin Strickland, now 62, will be released soon.
The other prisoners immediately started screaming and cheering, he tells to a group of American reporters. “I didn’t think this day would come. I’m still in disbelief.”
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Triple murder
The black man was found guilty by an all-white jury in 1978 for committing the triple murder of three twenty-somethings. This despite there being no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene. Many in the black community at the time were convinced that his swift conviction was racist.
In addition, his family provided alibis and even the killers – who confessed in 1979 – said Strickland had nothing to do with the murders. When it became clear that Strickland had to go to jail for fifty years, he burst into tears in court at the time. His brother LR was stunned, but not surprised. “I was just relieved that my brother didn’t get the death penalty.”
Strickland’s conviction came through a statement from Cynthia Douglas. She was the sole survivor and eyewitness in the case. She testified that she saw Strickland at the crime scene. This Douglas later tried several times to withdraw her testimony, because she was allegedly pressured by the police.
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Due to a local law change, Strickland’s appeal could only be filed years later. “Under these unique circumstances, the Court’s confidence in Strickland’s conviction has been so undermined that it cannot stand, and the verdict must be quashed,” he said. wrote Judge James Welsh yesterday. “The State of Missouri will immediately release Kevin Bernard Strickland from custody.”
What now?
Strickland has since been released. When asked what he would do first after his release, he said he wanted to see the ocean quickly and visit his mother’s grave. He also addressed other wrongly convicted inmates and said they should never give up. Strickland wants to talk to lawmakers to change the legal system. “I have some ideas to prevent this from happening to anyone else.”
The 62-year-old American was the longest unjustly imprisoned in Missouri history. Attorneys for the Midwest Innocence Project, who have worked in recent months to free Strickland, were “frantic” when they heard the news, they say against the BBC.
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The lawyers consider the chance that Strickhard will receive compensation is unlikely. In Missouri, only inmates acquitted through DNA evidence are financially compensated. “He will not get back the past 43 years and he will return home to a state that will not pay him a cent for the time it stole from him,” Midwest Innocence Project legal director Tricia Rojo Bushnell told the British broadcaster. “That’s not justice.”
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