Kevin Strickland could go free if August innocence hearing goes his way
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Kevin Strickland innocence claim
Kevin Strickland, 62, has spent the last 40-plus years in prison for a 1978 triple murder he says he did not commit. His lawyers, local prosecutors and Kansas City officials have urged he be released, but the Missouri Attorney General’s Office maintains he’s guilty.
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The DeKalb County judge who will hear Kevin Strickland’s innocence claim has set a two-day evidentiary hearing for next month.
During a brief hearing Monday, Judge Ryan Horsman set the evidentiary hearing — during which Strickland’s lawyers and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office will make opposing arguments — for Aug. 12 and 13.
Lawyers with the attorney general’s office said such a quick time frame could be a burden on the office. Horsman noted, though, that Strickland has been “sitting in prison since before I was born.”
At the end of the evidentiary hearing, Horsman will decide whether to free Strickland, who remains imprisoned for a 1978 triple murder in Kansas City that he maintains he did not commit.
In a recent filing, the attorney general’s office argued that Strickland, now 62, is guilty. He received a fair trial in 1979 and has “worked to evade responsibility” for the killings since then, the office contended.
One of Strickland’s attorneys, Robert Hoffman, said Strickland’s legal team was disappointed by the attorney general’s response, saying that the office overlooked important issues and “misconstrued a number of things.”
More than 60 days ago, Strickland received rare support from Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who said her office had concluded Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested, is “factually innocent” in the April 25, 1978, shooting at 6934 S. Benton Ave.
The gunfire took the lives of John Walker, 20, Sherrie Black, 22, and Larry Ingram, 21.
In an investigation published in September, The Star reported that, for decades, two men who pleaded guilty in the killings swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the shooting.
A third suspect, who was never charged, in 2019 said he knew Strickland was innocent.
The only eyewitness to the murders also told relatives she tried to recant and wanted nothing more than to see Strickland freed.
This story was originally published July 12, 2021 at 3:45 PM.
