More than $US900K raised for man who served 43 years in prison for crime he didn’t commit
After spending 43 years behind bars for a crime he said he didn’t commit, a Missouri man’s conviction has been set aside, according to a news release from Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. (James Wooldridge/The Kansas City Star/AP)
Thousands of people are raising money online for a Missouri man who served 43 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Kevin Strickland, 62, was exonerated Tuesday morning after serving decades at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. Strickland was convicted in 1979 of one count of capital murder and two counts of second-degree murder in a triple homicide. He received a 50-year life sentence without the possibility for parole for a crime that, over the years, he maintained he had not been involved in.
Senior Judge James Welsh dismissed all criminal counts against Strickland. His release makes his confinement the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history and one of the longest in the nation, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.
The Midwest Innocence Project created a GoFundMe account to help Strickland restart his life, since he doesn’t qualify for help from the state of Missouri.
In Missouri, only those exonerated through DNA testing are eligible for a US$50 per day of post-conviction confinement, according to the Innocence Project. That was not the case for Strickland.
As of early Thursday afternoon, donations for Strickland had topped US$910,000.
The fund was created over the summer with a goal of raising US$7,500, which the fund says would amount to approximately US$175 dollars for every year Strickland spent wrongfully convicted.
Strickland said he learned of his release through a breaking news report that interrupted the soap opera he was watching Tuesday.
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Source: CTV News
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