St. Louis County prosecutor: Evidence Strickland was wrongly convicted ‘overwhelming’


Kevin Strickland
American man convicted of triple homicide


Luke Nozicka
Wed, November 3, 2021

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell agrees with Jackson County prosecutors and other officials that the evidence Kevin Strickland was wrongly convicted “is overwhelming.”

In a statement to The Star, Bell said while his office generally does not comment on pending litigation, Strickland’s case “is different.”

Bell is the latest to join a list of officials, including Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, federal prosecutors in western Missouri and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who believe Strickland was wrongly convicted more than 40 years ago.

Prosecutors across the state are keeping tabs on the Strickland case — it is the first playing out under a new law that gives local prosecutors the ability to file motions seeking to free prisoners they have deemed innocent. Strickland’s evidentiary hearing, during which Baker’s office will argue he is innocent before Judge James Welsh, is set to start at 10 a.m. Monday.

In St. Louis County, Bell said his office’s unit that examines innocence claims is reviewing applications from prisoners contending they were wrongly convicted, some decades ago. He said his office would not hesitate to use the new law in the “appropriate case,” noting he supported the exoneration last year of Lawrence Callanan, who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1996.

“These tragic cases should remind all prosecuting attorneys, local, state and federal, that our mandate is to serve justice, not to deliver or defend prosecutions regardless of justice,” Bell said.

In May, Strickland received rare support from Jackson County prosecutors who said he is “factually innocent” in a 1978 triple murder and called for his immediate release. Baker filed a motion seeking to exonerate Strickland, 62, when the new law went into effect in August. Weeks later, Edward “Chip” Robertson, a former Missouri Supreme Court justice, joined Baker’s efforts.

After more than two months of legal sparring, Baker’s office and Strickland’s lawyers will face off in court Monday with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which contends Strickland is guilty and received a fair trial in 1979.

Post-conviction attorneys interviewed by The Star said they fear the attorney general’s tactics in Strickland’s case — such as filing motions that caused delays — will dissuade other prosecutors, especially those with fewer employees, from utilizing the new law.

The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office has not calculated the hours it has worked on Strickland’s case. But spokesman Mike Mansur said prosecutors have likely invested more hours into reviewing Strickland’s innocence claim and then trying to exonerate him than their predecessors spent “during the original trial.”

In an investigation published in 2020, The Star reported that, for decades, two men who pleaded guilty in the killings swore Strickland, then 18, was not with them and two other accomplices during the Kansas City murders. A third, uncharged suspect also said Strickland is innocent. The only eyewitness to the shooting later tried to recant her identification of Strickland and wanted him freed.

Ahead of Monday’s hearing, groups plan to gather at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Jackson County courthouse to call for Strickland’s release. The rally was put together, in part, by the National Organization of Exonerees, a group of exonerees based in Michigan.

If prosecutors prevail and Strickland is exonerated, his imprisonment will mark the longest known wrongful conviction in Missouri.