$1.3M raised for exonerated man

Kevin Strickland left a Missouri prison penniless Tuesday after serving more than 40 years for a triple murder that he did not commit, but more than 20,000 strangers have donated about $1.3 million (U.S.) to an online fundraiser to help his re-entry to society.

He was exonerated without DNA evidence, which disqualified him from being compensated by the state, despite spending decades behind bars, his lawyers said. Strickland, 62, said Friday that the community did not owe him anything for his wrongful imprisonment.

“The courts failed me, and that’s who should be trying to make my life a little more comfortable,” he said. “I really do appreciate the donations and contributions they made to try to help me acclimate to society.”

Strickland said the four days back in Kansas City had been overwhelming. The sprawl of highways was especially dizzying, he said during a phone call while headed to the Independence Center shopping mall to spend $25 that someone had given him. He said he planned to buy a bag of cough drops and a shower cap — his first purchases outside of prison in more than 40 years.

The online fundraiser, organized by the Midwest Innocence Project, was set up by Tricia Rojo Bushnell, one of his lawyers and the project’s executive director. Strickland does not yet have a bank account, a phone or a form of government identification. For now, he is staying at a brother’s house.

Strickland will receive the full amount of the donations as soon as he has a bank account to transfer it into, Bushnell said. The Midwest Innocence Project will also set him up with a financial adviser to help him structure the money and determine how he wishes to spend it.

Bushnell printed out a packet of supportive comments that accompanied the many donations.

Strickland was convicted in 1979 of killing three people in Kansas City the year before. The only eyewitness had picked Strickland from a lineup. Strickland was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years.

One of the two other men who pleaded guilty to the murders maintained that Strickland played no part in the killings, and the sole eyewitness later recanted her testimony, Judge James E. Welsh of Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals noted in his decision to exonerate Strickland.

The exoneration advanced after the passage this year of a state law allowing prosecutors to hold hearings for potential wrongful convictions for which there was new evidence. Barbara O’Brien, the editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, said there is a misconception that a majority of exonerations relied on DNA evidence. Of the registry’s 2,900 exonerations, only 549 involved DNA.

“It’s short-sighted to have a compensation scheme that turns on whether or not there’s DNA evidence of innocence because that has nothing to do with how innocent they are,” she said.

Strickland said he had some life plans to attend to, such as leaving Missouri and pursuing his dream of buying a small piece of land outside of a city.

“I’ll build a small house, a small bedroom, two- to three-bedroom house, have me some chickens and four to five dogs, a fishing pond somewhere close by, a big fence where nobody can get in,” he said. “Just some alone time, some getaway space.”