Kevin Strickland was convicted by all-white jury. That was by design, his lawyers say

Prosecutors intentionally excluded Black people from serving on a jury that, four decades ago, convicted an innocent Kansas City man who is still in prison, his attorneys say.

Lawyers for Kevin Strickland, who is Black, say Jackson County prosecutors used their first four peremptory strikes — meaning they did not need to give a reason — to remove the only four Black potential jurors from serving at Strickland’s murder trial 42 years ago.

Because of the prosecution’s “racially motivated” strikes, Strickland’s fate was decided by an all-white jury during a trial overseen by a white judge with white lawyers, Strickland’s attorneys argued in a petition filed Monday in the Missouri Supreme Court.

Their filing came on the same day the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office announced it had determined Strickland, now 61, is innocent in a 1978 triple homicide for which he has been imprisoned for more than two-thirds of his life. The county’s top prosecutors, federal prosecutors, Kansas City’s mayor and others are now calling for his exoneration and release.

As part of their petition to the state’s highest court, Strickland’s attorneys argued that his trials were marred by constitutional violations, including the deliberate exclusion of Black jurors. His petition comes as courts and legal groups have increasingly advocated for greater jury diversity as a way to make trials fairer, according to The Associated Press.

Strickland’s first 1979 trial ended in a hung jury of 11 to one, with the only Black juror holding out for acquittal, Strickland remembered in a 2019 interview with The Star.

“And she was right,” Strickland said. “I didn’t do it.”

Two months later, Strickland, then 19, was convicted by an all-white jury.

That was by design, his attorneys say.

Before Strickland’s second trial, four Black potential jurors remained after prosecutors and Strickland’s lawyers struck other residents “for cause,” meaning they had to provide a reason. Prosecutors then used their first four peremptory strikes to remove all four of the Black jurors remaining in a pool of 32 potential jurors.

The prosecution provided no race-neutral reason “to justify its targeting” of the Black jurors, Strickland’s attorneys wrote.

Two of the four, both of whom were Black women, did not say a word during the process in which attorneys ask jurors questions before a jury panel is selected.

Another juror, a Black man, was removed, even though he indicated he had a brother who was murdered and that he had worked as a security guard — details that would have made him a “strong juror” for prosecutors, Strickland’s attorneys argued.

One of the prosecutors made a comment during an evidentiary hearing that revealed “discriminatory intent,” according to Strickland’s attorneys. He said that including a Black juror at Strickland’s first trial was a mistake he “wouldn’t make again,” his lawyers with the Midwest Innocence Project and the law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner contend.

Strickland’s attorneys noted that his jury selection generally mirrored that of Batson v. Kentucky, a landmark 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled that jurors cannot be removed based solely on their race.

The strikes, Strickland’s lawyers said, created a “constitutional wrong that has lingered without remedy” for more than 40 years.

One 2012 study, which examined a 10-year period in Florida, found that all-white juries convict Black defendants “significantly more often” — by 16 percentage points — than white defendants. That disparity was “entirely eliminated” when the jury included one Black person.

“We know it makes that much of a difference,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, one of Strickland’s attorneys.

Asked about the issue at a Monday press conference, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said there was evidence to suggest that prosecutors intentionally struck Black jurors from Strickland’s second trial, but she added that her office was still reviewing “all pieces of that record.”

Baker, though, called it “such a travesty of justice as well.”

“What I would say on that issue is, it’s really awful,” Baker said. “The system requires everyone to be part of it, and we encourage everyone to serve as jurors.”

Conversations about the need for diverse juries resurfaced earlier this year during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former white Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, who was Black. That jury was less white than Minneapolis’ population.

In another much-publicized case, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 overturned the conviction and death sentence of Curtis Flowers, a Black man tried six times for the same crime in Mississippi, because of the prosecutor’s efforts to keep Black people off his jury.

Alan Tuerkheimer, a jury consultant and lawyer in Chicago, said studies have shown that homogeneous juries are not as meticulous in reviewing evidence or considering other viewpoints. They’re also not as accurate in recalling information, he said.

“Whereas if you have even just a small presence of a minority on that jury, the deliberations are usually longer and more alternatives are considered,” Tuerkheimer said.

The striking of four Black jurors in a row in Strickland’s case, he added, sounded like “a pattern and practice” based solely on race.

Since the Kansas City jury convicted Strickland, at least half of the jurors have died. Strickland has said he wishes he could ask them: What exactly persuaded them of his guilt?

One juror, a woman in her 80s, told The Star she could only recall one detail from the trial: Strickland, she opined, looked in court like “your typical next door neighbor” in nice clothing, but in his driver’s license photograph, he appeared to be “a lowlife” and “a bad guy.”

“I mean, he looked like a thug,” she suggested.

Strickland’s fate is now in the hands of the state Supreme Court.