PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Strickland last remembers being in a courtroom in 1985. Over the course of his 42 years in prison, he has tried by himself, at least 17 times, to get his claims heard. Until last week, he never received a hearing. Strickland’s proclaimed innocence was the focus of a September 2020 investigation by The Star, which interviewed more than two dozen people, including relatives of the eyewitness and two men who pleaded guilty and swore Strickland was not involved. In May, Baker announced that her office’s months-long review had concluded Strickland is “factually innocent.” Baker filed a motion seeking to free him when the new law went into effect in August."
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STORY: "Judge in Kevin Strickland case asks for more filings. What does this mean?, by Reporter Luke Nozycka, published by The Kansas City Star on November 15. 2021.
PHOTO CAPTION: "In closing arguments, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker asked the judge presiding over an evidentiary hearing to determine if Kevin Strickland was wrongfully convicted of a 1978 triple murder to set him free."
GIST: "The judge who heard evidence last week at a long-awaited hearing for Kevin Strickland, who prosecutors say is innocent in a decades-old triple murder, is not expected to make a ruling for at least another week.
After the hearing that ended Wednesday, Judge James Welsh ordered the attorneys involved to file final exhibits, post-hearing briefs and proposed findings, the last of which are due Nov. 22.
During the hearing at the Jackson County courthouse, Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and her team argued that Strickland, 62, has spent more than 40 years in prison for a 1978 triple murder in Kansas City that he did not commit.
Her office called to the stand the relatives of the lone eyewitness to the killings, who said she recanted her identification of Strickland to them over the years.
Lawyers with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office argued that Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested, is guilty and received a fair trial in 1979.
They attacked the credibility of Baker’s evidence and argued that the testimony of the eyewitness’ loved ones was “hearsay, upon hearsay, upon hearsay.”
The hearing was the first of its kind under a new Missouri law that allows local prosecutors to file motions seeking to free prisoners they have deemed innocent.
Welsh, a retired court of appeals judge, took the case under advisement at the end of the three-day hearing.
He said he would make his decision in a “timely fashion,” though he did not indicate when that would be.
As an officer escorted him out of the courtroom in a wheelchair Wednesday evening, Strickland said he was feeling “really good” about his chances at exoneration. “I’d say 80%,” he said before he was taken back to the Cameron prison.
Strickland last remembers being in a courtroom in 1985. Over the course of his 42 years in prison, he has tried by himself, at least 17 times, to get his claims heard.
Until last week, he never received a hearing.
Strickland’s proclaimed innocence was the focus of a September 2020 investigation by The Star, which interviewed more than two dozen people, including relatives of the eyewitness and two men who pleaded guilty and swore Strickland was not involved.
In May, Baker announced that her office’s months-long review had concluded Strickland is “factually innocent.”
Baker filed a motion seeking to free him when the new law went into effect in August.
Several prosecutors across Missouri as well as national legal observers have been following Strickland’s case closely.
Some lawyers have noted that Strickland was convicted of a capital offense, though prosecutors waived the death penalty and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years.
“If he had been sentenced to death, he would have been one of the wrongful executions never acknowledged to be wrongful,” Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., wrote Monday on Twitter."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article255823596.html
