New Missouri law would free innocent people. Prosecuting attorneys are on the clock
Prosecuting attorneys in Missouri are now on the clock.
On Thursday, the Missouri legislature gave local prosecutors a mechanism to right past wrongs. The measure, if signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson, would allow elected officials such as Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and others to seek justice in cases of wrongful convictions.
But old habits die hard. If prosecutors didn’t have the incentive to go digging before, they do now.
In Missouri, as elsewhere across the country, actual innocence is not enough to free a wrongfully convicted person from prison. How so? Unless prisoners are on death row, have been exonerated by DNA evidence or had their constitutional rights violated, they have no legal recourse for freedom. Not even with the backing of elected prosecutors hell-bent on criminal justice reform.
And that has kept innocent people like Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson behind bars for decades. Strickland has been in a Missouri prison since 1978 for a triple murder he did not commit. It’s been more than 26 years since Johnson saw freedom, despite evidence showing he is likely innocent of the first-degree murder conviction that sent him to jail for life.
More prisoners sit behind bars under questionable circumstances.
It would be a miscarriage of justice if Johnson doesn’t benefit from the legislation. But others like Strickland could. And that is a positive development in a state all too consumed with keeping innocent folks locked away.
With the passage of the bill, “now we have to get busy,” Peters Baker said.
Although the controversial bill lifted the Kansas City Police Department’s requirement that officers live in Kansas City, it did include a bipartisan package of criminal justice reforms. Lawmakers made it a priority to give elected officials such as Peters Baker and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner power to ask a judge to throw out convictions in innocence cases. And we have to applaud that.
But those who took oaths to uphold the law must do so in good faith, advocates for the wrongfully convicted say.
Having the tool to free an innocent prisoner is one thing. Acting on the evidence is an entirely different story. Countless people are still confined despite overwhelming evidence that they are innocent. Johnson and Strickland were among them.
Peters Baker, along with federal prosecutors, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and J. Dale Youngs, presiding judge of Jackson County, all called for Strickland’s immediate exoneration and release.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office fought Gardner’s attempt to grant Johnson at least a new trial. The fight ended up in the Missouri Supreme Court, which ruled local prosecutors could not free innocent people. The new law, if signed, presumably fixes that legal loophole.
Asked if the AG’s office planned to oppose the motion filed by Peters Baker to release Strickland, a spokesman for Schmitt declined to comment.
“I think I’ll let our response filing speak for itself,” the spokesman wrote in an email. There was no filing on record as of Friday.
It remains to be seen how the new law would impact Johnson, his attorney Lindsay Runnels said.
“The short answer is we don’t know yet,” she said.
The Missouri AG’s office — no matter the political affiliation — has been ruthlessly opposed to freeing innocent people. Just about every wrongful conviction case to come before the office since 2000 has been challenged, an analysis of legal documents by Chicago-based news outlet Injustice Watch found. Schmitt is no exception.
“I trust the professionals in his office will find the same answer we found after they see the evidence,” Peters Baker said. “Kevin Strickland is innocent.”
No defendant should have to remain behind bars because of legal technicalities or procedural issues. Under Missouri’s new law, a judge could — at the urging of the prosecutor — set aside a wrongful conviction based on “clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.”
In the American justice system, defendants are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Missouri is finally catching on.
This story was originally published May 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
