To Eric Schmitt, the system that locked up an innocent man matters more than justice

Wednesday, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt tried to defend his disgraceful behavior in the Kevin Strickland case and failed. Miserably. Again.

Strickland, you’ll recall, spent more than four decades in a Missouri prison for a crime he did not commit. A judge released him last year after Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker acknowledged the state’s “profound” mistake in convicting and incarcerating an innocent man.

Before that ruling, Schmitt tried desperately to prevent Strickland’s release from custody. He claimed the court and the prosecutor could not be “fair.” He filed delaying motions and appeals. He fought at every turn to keep an innocent man behind bars.

Wednesday, Missouri state Rep. LaKeySha Bosley of St. Louis asked Schmitt to explain his behavior.

“Obviously, this is a heavy issue,” Schmitt shrugged.

“There had been a conviction, obviously, by a jury of his peers,” the attorney general continued. No. The 1979 jury that convicted Stickland was all-white. Black people were intentionally struck from the jury pool.

Strickland is Black.

The attorney general insisted he needed to “test” the evidence in the case. “We have an adversarial system,” he told the House Budget Committee. “That’s the role that we’ve played for 200 years in the office.”

Whose interest was Schmitt protecting when he butted into the case? Strickland’s “adversary” has been the state — for 43 years. It convicted him on flimsy evidence, denied his appeals and kept him behind bars for something he didn’t do.

When Baker recognized the error of the conviction, she asked a court to overturn it. She was the state’s representative. She asked a judge to weigh the evidence of Strickland’s innocence and issue a ruling.

That should have been the end of it. Schmitt, who is a candidate for higher office, had other plans.

What the attorney general said Wednesday is that the truth doesn’t matter — that obeying the corrupt system that put Strickland in jail is more important than seeing justice done. It’s appalling for any lawyer to suggest that, but it is beyond imagining for an attorney general.

Has this really been the practice of the office for 200 years? How many other innocent people were put in jail, or are still in jail, because the attorney general doesn’t care about a defendant’s actual guilt or innocence?

Schmitt didn’t say. He had an opportunity Wednesday to apologize to Kevin Strickland on behalf of the state he claims to represent. He did not do so.

Let’s be clear: The state of Missouri’s only interest in criminal cases is to make sure the guilty are punished and the innocent are not. Schmitt failed that test, egregiously, and his ham-handed explanation Wednesday deepens our conclusion that he is unfit for public office.

This story was originally published February 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM.