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November 29,2021

Anna Murray 

Kevin Strickland was released from the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, on November 23, 2021. Strickland was imprisoned for 43 years for wrongful incarceration until his triple murder conviction was overturned by a judge in 1978.

Cynthia Douglas, the sole survivor of the fatal shooting who died in 2015, admitted she may have misidentified him. Strickland has maintained his innocence throughout the years, claiming that he was at home watching television on April 25, 1978, when Larry Ingram, 21, John Walker, 20, and Sherrie Black, 22, were murdered in Kansas City, Missouri. 

Senior Judge James Welsh dismissed all criminal charges against Strickland. According to The National Registry of Exonerations, his release ends the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history, as well as one of the longest in the United States.

Missouri lacks the legal authority to compensate Strickland. Strickland was exonerated in the absence of DNA evidence, making him ineligible for state compensation under Missouri law. However, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Strickland's attorney and the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, stated that as of November 26, the GoFundMe campaign for Strickland had raised more than US$1.4 million from 25,000 donors from all over the world.