A judge in the state of Missouri in the USA has ordered the immediate release of a man who has spent 43 years in prison for a triple murder he did not commit.
Kevin Strickland (62) is dark-skinned and was convicted by a white panel of judges in 1979 for three murders in the city of Kansas. He was then sentenced to life in prison.
Strickland pleaded not guilty and also had an alibi. There was also no evidence linking him to the killings.
The prosecution agreed earlier this year that he had been wrongly convicted.
The 62-year-old has served 43 years behind bars. This makes him one of the longest-serving inmates in the United States who has been wrongly convicted, according to the National Registry of Acquittals.
–Incorrectly designated
The Strickland killings were wrongly convicted of taking place in Kansas City, in April 1978.
Four people were shot, three of them dead. Cynthia Douglas, who died in 2015, was the only one who survived. In 1978, she testified that Strickland was at the scene when the triple murders took place. It writes CNN.
She is said to have done this the day after she had identified two other abusers.
However, the identification of Strickland should only have happened after she was told that his hair matched her description of the shooter.
For the next 30 years, according to CNN, she made a mistake and identified him incorrectly. And she tried to get him released with the help of the Midwest Innocence Project.
The two other assailants who were identified at the crime scene pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and served 10 years in prison.
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