Kevin Strickland Exonerated 42 Years After Wrongful Capital Murder Conviction in Missouri

More than 42 years after his wrong­ful cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion in June 1979, a Missouri judge has set Kevin Strickland (pic­tured) free. 

On November 23, 2021, Judge James Welsh grant­ed a motion filed by Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker under a new­ly enact­ed Missouri law allow­ing local pros­e­cu­tors to peti­tion for the release of pris­on­ers they believe to be inno­cent. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Strickland to the 1978 Kansas City triple mur­ders for which he was con­vict­ed; two oth­er men con­vict­ed of the killings lat­er named oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the offense but said Strickland was not involved; and the lone eye­wit­ness who tes­ti­fied against him said she had been pres­sured by police to false­ly impli­cate Strickland. Welsh agreed with Peters Baker that ​“clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” pre­sent­ed at Strickland’s inno­cence hear­ing ​“so under­mined … the judge­ment of con­vic­tion” that it must be set aside.

Strickland, who is Black, was cap­i­tal­ly tried twice for the mur­ders. The jury in his first tri­al dead­locked at 11 – 1 for con­vic­tion, with the only Black juror hold­ing out for acquit­tal. Strickland was con­vict­ed of one count of cap­i­tal mur­der and two counts of sec­ond-degree mur­der by an all-white jury in his sec­ond tri­al. After he was con­vict­ed, the pros­e­cu­tion with­drew the death penal­ty from his case.

“If he had been sen­tenced to death, he would have been one of the wrong­ful exe­cu­tions nev­er acknowl­edged to be wrong­ful,” DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham said.

An inves­tiga­tive series by the Kansas City Star in fall 2020 brought renewed atten­tion to Strickland’s case. After con­duct­ing its own inves­ti­ga­tion, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office con­clud­ed in May 2021 that the new evi­dence ​“evis­cer­at­ed” the case against Strickland and that he was ​“fac­tu­al­ly innocent.”

“To say we’re extreme­ly pleased and grate­ful is an under­state­ment,” Peters Baker said in a state­ment after the rul­ing. ​“This brings jus­tice — final­ly — to a man who has trag­i­cal­ly suf­fered so, so great­ly as a result of this wrongful conviction.”

Speaking to reporters out­side the Western Missouri Correctional Center fol­low­ing his release, Strickland — now 62 and in a wheel­chair fol­low­ing sev­er­al heart attacks — said he was attempt­ing to process a range of emo­tions. ​“I’m not nec­es­sar­i­ly angry. It’s a lot,” he said. ​“Joy, sor­row, fear. I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to put them togeth­er.” He said he would like to become involved in efforts to reform the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem to ​“keep this from hap­pen­ing to someone else.”

The Evidence in Strickland’s Case

Strickland was con­vict­ed of the April 25, 1978 shoot­ing deaths of John Walker, Sherrie Black, and Larry Ingram. Cynthia Douglas, who was wound­ed in the shoot­ing, was the lone eye­wit­ness. On the night of the crime, she iden­ti­fied two men, Vincent Bell and Kilm Adkins. Both of them plead­ed guilty to sec­ond-degree mur­der and served 10 years in prison. The fol­low­ing day, Douglas iden­ti­fied Strickland as anoth­er per­pe­tra­tor, but lat­er recant­ed her tes­ti­mo­ny. In 2009, she con­tact­ed the Midwest Innocence Project, writ­ing in an email, ​“I am seek­ing info on how to help some­one that was wrong­ful­ly accused. I was the only eye­wit­ness and things were not clear back then, but now I know more and would like to help this per­son if I can.”

Because Douglas died in 2015, she could not tes­ti­fy at Strickland’s hear­ing, but sev­er­al friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers told the court that Douglas had recant­ed to them. Bell and Adkins have also both said Strickland was not involved in the killing. According to Bell’s 1979 tes­ti­mo­ny, Adkins was hap­py to see police arrest Strickland, believ­ing it meant the police wouldn’t trace them to the crime. He report­ed­ly told Bell, ​“That’s good, ​‘cause they start­ing off wrong. They pick­ing up the wrong man.”

Strickland reject­ed a plea deal and faced a pos­si­ble death sen­tence, but he says he believed the sys­tem would acquit him. At the inno­cence hear­ing, he tes­ti­fied, ​“I wasn’t about to plead guilty to a crime I had absolute­ly noth­ing to do with. Wasn’t going to do it … at 18 years old, and I knew the sys­tem worked, so I knew that I would be vin­di­cat­ed, I wouldn’t be found guilty of a crime I did not com­mit. I would not take a plea deal and admit to some­thing I did not do.”

Obstruction by State Officials

Missouri passed a law in April 2021 allow­ing local pros­e­cu­tors to file motions to free pris­on­ers they believe to be inno­cent. Strickland’s was the first case in which a hear­ing was con­duct­ed under the new law. Peters Baker filed a motion to free Strickland when the law went into effect in August. At that time, she reached out to Attorney General Eric Schmitt hop­ing to find a part­ner in ​“seek­ing the truth.” Instead, the attor­ney general’s office active­ly opposed the efforts to exon­er­ate Strickland, assert­ing dur­ing the hear­ing that Strickland’s evi­dence was ​“hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay” and that affirm­ing his con­vic­tion was nec­es­sary to defend ​“the rule of law.” 

In June, more than a dozen state and local leg­is­la­tors asked Missouri Governor Mike Parson to par­don Strickland. Citing a back­log of more than 3,000 clemen­cy requests, Parson took no action on Strickland’s appli­ca­tion say­ing it was not ​“a pri­or­i­ty.” Then, on August 4, Parson par­doned Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who had pled guilty to mis­de­meanor harass­ment and assault charges after point­ing an auto­mat­ic rifle and a hand­gun at peace­ful Black Lives Matter demon­stra­tors in June 2020.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion of Parson’s clemen­cy deci­sions drew sharp crit­i­cism from racial jus­tice advo­cates. St. Louis State Rep. LaKeySha Bosley said in a state­ment: ​“While inmates like Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson have watched from prison for decades as life passed them by for crimes they did not com­mit, two unhinged, para­noid, delu­sion­al admit­ted crim­i­nals — one of them a Republican can­di­date for U.S. Senate — get par­doned by the gov­er­nor less than a month after they plead­ed guilty to point­ing loaded firearms at peace­ful pro­tes­tors.” Local pros­e­cu­tors say Johnson, who has served 26 years for mur­der also is inno­cent, but the Missouri attor­ney general’s office has opposed his release. Like Strickland, Johnson is Black.

Strickland’s moth­er died on August 21, 2021. He was unable to attend the funer­al because motions filed by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office delayed the hear­ing that led to his release. As the hear­ing was under­way, the attor­ney general’s office filed motions to lim­it what the court could con­sid­er to the evi­dence pre­sent­ed in the tri­al in which Strickland was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, to remove Strickland as a par­ty to the hear­ing, and to replace local pros­e­cu­tors with the state attor­ney general’s office as the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the state of Missouri in the hear­ing. The court reject­ed the motions. 

The obstruc­tion by state pros­e­cu­tors is part of a nation­wide pat­tern of state-lev­el offi­cials oppos­ing the efforts of local pros­e­cu­tors to redress what they per­ceive as mis­car­riages of jus­tice in mur­der pros­e­cu­tions. Most recent­ly, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed motions to block DNA test­ing for two Florida death row pris­on­ers after State Attorney Monique H. Worrell agreed to grant the test­ing. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery delayed the removal of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman from death row for two years, after Davidson County District Attorney General Glenn Funk agreed to resen­tence Abdur’Rahman to life because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in the case. 

An Historically Long Wrongful Conviction

Strickland’s wrong­ful incar­cer­a­tion is one of the longest in American his­to­ry. He was arrest­ed when he was 18 years old and spent 42 years and 4 months in prison from the time of his con­vic­tion to the time of his release. The National Registry of Exonerations data­base of exon­er­a­tions since 1989 lists just eight oth­er cas­es in which exon­er­a­tion took more than 42 years. Florida death-row exoneree Clifford Williams, Jr. and North Carolina death-row exoneree Charles Ray Finch, both of whom were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in 1976 and exon­er­at­ed in 2019, also spent more than 42 years in prison.

Although Strickland was wrong­ful­ly impris­oned for more than four decades, he will not receive any com­pen­sa­tion from Missouri, which pro­vides com­pen­sa­tion only to those exon­er­at­ed by DNA testing.

Kevin Strickland’s case car­ries a mes­sage for fam­i­ly mem­bers of oth­er pris­on­ers who are wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. ​“I’m just galac­ti­cal­ly over­whelmed,” his broth­er, L.R. Strickland, said. ​“Fight as long as you’re able to,” Strickland’s cousin, Carol Jones, told the Kansas City Star.