Missouri governor does not pardon Kevin Strickland, whose innocence claim won support

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson this week passed on the chance to free Kevin Strickland, a Kansas City man who prosecutors say has spent four decades in prison for a triple murder he did not commit.

On Memorial Day, Parson pardoned 36 people, and some Missourians hoped that Strickland, who turns 62 on Monday, would be among them. But the governor’s office released their names Thursday, and Strickland was not on the list.

Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said she and Strickland’s other lawyers were disappointed.

“There’s no question that Mr. Strickland’s innocent,” she said. “And we think that anyone who has the power to exonerate him and bring him home should be using that.”

Parson could still pardon Strickland. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, but his office has previously said it is aware of Strickland’s case.

On May 10, Strickland received rare support from Jackson County’s prosecutors, Kansas City’s mayor and other officials who called for his exoneration and release. They said he is innocent in the April 25, 1978, killings at 6934 S. Benton Ave. in Kansas City.

The case against Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested, was “thin from its inception” and relied almost entirely on the testimony of a traumatized woman who was shot during the murders, prosecutors now say.

As reported in a Star investigation, two men who pleaded guilty in the killings for decades swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the shooting. The lone eyewitness also recanted and wanted Strickland released.

Additionally, a third suspect, who was never charged, said in 2019 that he knew there “couldn’t be a more innocent person than” Strickland, according to a Midwest Innocence Project investigator.

Earlier this week, the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear Strickland’s case. His attorneys Wednesday refiled his petition in Missouri’s 43rd Circuit Court, which serves the region where Strickland remains imprisoned in Cameron.

Jackson County Prosecutor

In an interview Thursday, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said if all else fails, she intends to file a motion at 9 a.m. Aug. 28 to ask a judge to free Strickland.

That’s when a bill, if signed into law by Parson, would clear the way for innocence claims to be brought before trial courts when a prosecutor believes a prisoner is innocent.

“That’s the first day that I’m actually empowered to act,” Baker said. “So, 9 a.m., I’ll be ready, unless other legal actions have already prevailed.”

Local prosecutors in Missouri currently have no power to right wrongful convictions themselves. Baker’s office has declared Strickland innocent and filed a brief supporting his petitions, but Baker has said she has no legal mechanism to free him.

Baker did not want her review of Strickland’s conviction to come off as political. That’s why her office asked Mayor Quinton Lucas, federal prosecutors, the Board of Police Commissioners and others to weigh in, she said.

The prosecutor also said her office has been in contact with the governor’s office, which she hopes will pardon Strickland. She said her staff assured the governor’s office that “we really did our work” in reviewing Strickland’s case in an in-depth manner.

“This was not a quick decision reached by us,” Baker said. “He’s innocent. ... We know that from the work that we did.”

The supreme court denial Tuesday was not new for Strickland. Over the decades, he tried by himself, at least 17 times, to get his claims heard by Missouri courts. He has never received a hearing.

Governors have the power to grant clemency in the form of pardons and commutations. Strickland has said he is not interested in having his sentence commuted because he is seeking exoneration.

“He’s been fighting for decades and what’s important to him is that his innocence is recognized,” Rojo Bushnell said. “Justice would only be him being fulled exonerated either through the courts or through a pardon.”

In the case of Rodney Lincoln, for example, outgoing Gov. Eric Greitens in 2018 commuted his sentence to time served and he was released. But officially, Lincoln — who proclaimed his innocence in a 1982 St. Louis murder — remains on the public record as a convicted killer.