Rodney Lincoln is innocent. But Missouri law won’t let him clear his name for good

On April 27, 1982, two lives were forever changed.

Melissa DeBoer: On that day, my mother, JoAnne Tate, was brutally assaulted and murdered in St. Louis. I was 7 at the time, and my sister, Renee, was 4. We were assaulted, too. I was terrified and traumatized. I was pressured by police to identify who did this — and I wrongly identified Rodney Lincoln.

Kay Lincoln: My life changed that day, too. My father, Rodney Lincoln, was convicted of that horrible crime and he would ultimately spend 36 years in prison even though he was innocent. Although my dad had an alibi for the time of the crime and no motive to kill JoAnne, he was ultimately convicted based upon two pieces of evidence — hairs at the crime scene that an analyst claimed were a match to my dad’s hair, and an identification of my dad made by Melissa, a traumatized, 7-year-old child.

We are both victims of a broken criminal justice system. And we want change.

Both of us, connected by these unspeakable tragedies, wonder what our lives would have been had Rodney not been wrongfully sent to prison for over 36 years.

For one of us, it would have meant not living with the guilt of having your testimony send an innocent man to prison for a crime he did not commit. It could have helped law enforcement put the person who committed this crime in jail, no longer able to hurt anyone else. Even after recanting my testimony in 2015, I live every day with the guilt that I sent an innocent man to prison. The person that murdered my mother and stole so much from my sister and me was never brought to justice.

For the other of us, it would have meant decades of time with my father — the ability for him to see me grow up, and form relationships with my children.

We can never get back all we have lost, and 40 years later, we still wait for justice. But now, we work together to reform our system so that other victims will not experience the harm that we did.

We recently testified to the Missouri Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence in support of SB 1201, which, as introduced, would create a path for an innocent person to bring a claim of actual innocence to a judge. Because currently in Missouri, innocence is a reason to overturn a conviction only if someone was sentenced to death. It is not a claim innocent people can raise if they were sentenced to life without parole, or any other sentence. This means that innocent people in Missouri who have evidence that can prove their innocence, but who were not sentenced to death, will remain behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit. This is exactly what happened to Rodney.

Despite evidence proving his innocence, the Missouri Court of Appeals denied Rodney’s innocence claim in 2016 because he was not sentenced to the death penalty. The court acknowledged that his evidence of innocence was compelling, but said it couldn’t do anything because Missouri law recognizes innocence claims only in death penalty cases.

The time has come to let courts hear an innocence claim regardless of the person’s sentence. Why is Missouri keeping innocent people in prison just because of their sentence, when there is evidence that proves their innocence? It doesn’t make sense. It is wrong. Without passing SB 1201 as introduced, innocent Missourians and victims will go through what we did. And that is certainly not justice.