The story of the American who spent 43 years in prison being innocent

Sometimes the justice system of a country makes a mistake and condemns a person who is innocent. It has been seen several times in the past, when after years and even decades that culprit becomes innocent.

That is the case of Kevin Strickland, an African-American who was acquitted and released in the last week of November by a court in the state of Missouri, in the central United States, after spending 43 years behind bars for a judicial error.

Strickland, 62, had been sentenced in 1979 to life in prison by an all-white jury for a triple murder that occurred a year earlier in Kansas City, Missouri, he recalls. AFP.

Strickland firmly proclaimed his innocence, and earlier this year the Jackson County prosecutor’s office, which includes Kansas City, decided he had been wrongly convicted.

After reviewing the case, Judge James Welsh ordered Strickland’s immediate release on Tuesday, November 23.

The exoneration of Strickland lor become one of the longest-serving prisoners behind bars in America to have been wrongfully convicted.

In an interview with the newspaper El País, he said that he still feels like a prisoner and even waits lying on his bed for the bell that rang in the prison to go to breakfast.

It also does not recognize the new Kansas City. Her parents are gone, she has no contact with her siblings and her son, and she has only seen her daughter five times. This, not to mention that his life with her mother, who was his girlfriend at the time of his arrest, was left in oblivion due to the wrong ruling against him. She was married later.

“I know that I’m awake, but I can’t stop thinking that someone is going to shake me and say no, that I’m dreaming, that they have taken me for a ride, that I’m still in prison … I don’t know how to talk to normal people, I’ve grown up among animals, “he says, with a sudden and disconcerting sweetness,” he told the journalist who spoke with him.

As a way to help him, a fund was created at gofundme.com to receive donations and try to get his life back. He has already received more than 1.7 million dollars and with that money the first thing he wants to do is buy a house on the outskirts of the city, where he does not have much contact with people.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, from the universities of Irvine in California and Michigan, some 2,500 people acquitted by justice in the last 30 years have spent an average of 13.9 years in prison, with a maximum of 47 years and 2 months .

Strickland, whose first trial was void, was found guilty in a second trial for the April 25, 1978 murder of three people who were tied up and shot.

The sole survivor, Cynthia Douglas, identified Strickland as one of the four men responsible for the massacre, but later retracted her testimony.

Two of the men convicted of the murders said Strickland was not involved and identified two other men as participants.

There was also no evidence linking Strickland to the crime, and he even provided an alibi for where he was at the time.

“Strickland was convicted solely on the testimony of Douglas, who subsequently retracted his statements,” the judge said.

“In these unique circumstances, the Court’s confidence in Strickland’s conviction is so undermined that it cannot be upheld, and the conviction must be overturned,” he noted, adding: “The Court orders Strickland’s immediate release.”

Jackson County Attorney Jean Peters Baker welcomed the decision.

“This brings justice, finally, to a man who has tragically suffered so much as a result of this wrongful conviction,” Baker said in a statement.

The Midwest Innocence Project, which advocated for Strickland’s case, launched an online fundraising campaign to help him start a new life.

Strickland told him before leaving the newspaper The Washington Post that, once free, he wanted to visit the grave of his mother, who died last August, and see, for the first time, the sea.

The first has already been fulfilled. (I)