MO man free after 43 years served on wrongful conviction

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A justice ruled Tuesday that a Missouri antheral tin walk free aft being imprisoned for 43 years for a execution helium did not perpetrate — the longest condemnation served of immoderate wrongfully convicted idiosyncratic successful Missouri's history.

Kevin Strickland was arrested and charged with a triple execution connected to an April 1978 shooting that near 3 radical dead. A twelvemonth later, helium was convicted and sentenced to beingness successful situation by an all-white jury.

Strickland's condemnation came lone aft an archetypal proceedings ended successful a hung assemblage — thing the prosecution blamed connected the inclusion of a Black juror.

Strickland's proceedings was based heavy connected the grounds of the lone subsister of the shooting, Cynthia Douglas. But arsenic the decades progressed, Douglas began to recognize she had identified the incorrect antheral arsenic the shooter.

In February 2009, Douglas began the process of freeing Strickland erstwhile she sent an email to the Midwest Innocence Project.

Douglas died successful 2015 aft a prolonged illness.

In caller evidentiary hearings successful Strickland's ineligible case, his lawyers called aggregate witnesses to the stand, galore of whom were Douglas' household and friends. Each recalled times erstwhile Douglas told them she'd chosen the incorrect antheral successful 1978.

Testimony from a representation and recognition adept further showed however Douglas's archetypal recognition of Strickland could person been wrong. Dr. Nancy Franklin testified that the trauma of the crime, a poorly selected lineup and power from those astir her contributed to Douglas' misidentification of Strickland arsenic the antheral who held the shotgun successful April 1978.

The Missouri Attorney General's bureau had argued that Strickland's condemnation should stand, saying that Douglas' recantations were thing but "hearsay" and did not conscionable the modular needed to wide a conviction.

Ultimately, Judge James Welsh, who had been specially appointed to the lawsuit by the Supreme Court of Missouri, ruled Strickland could beryllium freed.

This communicative was primitively published by Hailey Godburn connected Scripps presumption KSHB successful Kansas City, Missouri.