Missouri Supreme Court won’t hear Kevin Strickland’s case. He’s innocent, prosecutors say
Over the last 40 years, Kevin Strickland tried by himself, at least 17 times, to get his claims heard by Missouri courts. He has never received a hearing.
In his most recent attempt, Strickland had well-known innocence attorneys who filed his petition with rare and overwhelming support from Jackson County’s prosecutors, Kansas City’s mayor and others who called for his exoneration and release. They have determined Strickland has spent four decades in prison for a triple murder he did not commit.
Yet on Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear Strickland’s case. The state’s highest court did not provide a reason in its one-page dismissal.
“This denial is just one more procedural barrier the system throws up in front of innocent people,” Strickland’s attorneys said in a statement Wednesday, vowing to continue their fight for his exoneration. “It’s difficult to understand how there can be any justice in the criminal legal system when a court is indifferent to someone’s innocence.”
Every court should have the power to free Strickland, his lawyers added. They intend to refile his petition in Missouri’s 43rd Circuit Court, which serves the region where Strickland, 61, remains imprisoned in Cameron.
Strickland’s petition was filed May 10 — the same day Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced that her office had concluded Strickland was wrongly convicted in the April 25, 1978, murders at 6934 S. Benton Ave. in Kansas City.
In a short statement, Baker said her office was “disappointed” by the court’s decision.
“But we are pursuing all avenues of exoneration for Mr. Strickland,” she said.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said he did not understand why the court did not act. The situation, he said, appears to be “fairly clear.”
“It’s clear that he should not be in prison anymore,” Lucas told The Star.
Sean O’Brien, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor, said the supreme court essentially told Strickland’s lawyers to file his petition in a lower court. His case was not dismissed with prejudice, so it could be filed in the supreme court again if it came to that.
“This isn’t the end of the line,” O’Brien said, noting however that the “casualty” of the decision was time. “Why make him needlessly go through all this process?”
Prosecutor’s review
The prosecutor’s office began reviewing Strickland’s conviction in November after speaking with his lawyers and reading a Star investigation into his innocence claim.
The case against Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested, was “thin from its inception” and relied almost entirely on the testimony of a traumatized woman who was shot during the murders, prosecutors said following their monthslong review.
For decades, two men who pleaded guilty in the killings swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the shooting. The lone eyewitness also recanted and wanted nothing more than to see Strickland released, her relatives said.
Additionally, a third suspect, who was never charged, said in 2019 that he knew there “couldn’t be a more innocent person than” Strickland, according to a Midwest Innocence Project investigator.
Throughout the decades, Strickland’s attempts to get in court were denied on procedural grounds. No judge has “considered the totality” of the evidence, prosecutors say.
“Keeping him incarcerated now on a jury verdict, where the jury heard none of this convincing exculpatory evidence, serves no conceivably just purpose,” Baker and Dan Nelson, the county’s chief deputy prosecutor, wrote in a letter last month.
In their filing, Strickland’s attorneys argued he is not only innocent, but his trials were marred by constitutional violations. That included allegations that prosecutors deliberately excluded Black jurors from serving at Strickland’s second trial.
Other Missourians, including attorneys not involved in Strickland’s case, expressed outrage following the court’s decision.
“Why is he still in a Missouri prison?” Elad Gross, who last year unsuccessfully ran for Missouri attorney general as a Democrat, wrote on Twitter. “Because our government has failed him, has failed the victim’s family, and is failing each and every one of us.”
Seeking full exoneration
Despite the dismissal, Strickland could be freed through other avenues.
The 43rd Circuit Court, where Strickland’s attorneys plan to refile his petition, is the same court where a judge in 2019 ordered the release of Ricky Kidd, who spent 23 years in prison for a 1996 double murder he did not commit in Kansas City.
Another way could be found in a bill sent by lawmakers last month to Gov. Mike Parson’s desk, which would allow Baker to ask a judge to free Strickland. If signed, it would clear the way for innocence claims to be brought before trial courts whenever a prosecutor believes an incarcerated person is innocent.
At the time, Baker celebrated the General Assembly’s action.
“My hope is that Mr. Strickland will not need this new fix because his case is before the Supreme Court now,” she said in a statement then. “But I will use any pathway available to exonerate and free him.”
Parson could also grant Strickland clemency. In May, the governor’s office said it was aware of Strickland’s case but declined to comment further.
It has been done before. In 2018, outgoing Gov. Eric Greitens commuted the sentence of Rodney Lincoln, who proclaimed his innocence in a 1982 St. Louis murder, to time served.
Missouri courts also had denied Lincoln his freedom before the governor’s action. He was released after serving 36 years in prison.
Strickland, however, has said he is seeking full exoneration.
In an interview last week, Strickland said he remained hopeful about his petition before the supreme court. But he has read a lot of case law over the years and said he knew courts can be “very unpredictable.”
“I mean, they could very well say, ‘Yeah, all this is fine and well,’” Strickland said of the public support for his exoneration. “’But we’re going to go with what we first heard back in 1979.’”
The Star’s Steve Vockrodt contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 1, 2021 at 11:04 PM.
