“Republican M
issouri Gov. Mike Parson says addressing the clemency petition for a man who’s been behind bars for a triple murder for more than four decades is not a ‘priority,’ even though prosecutors say he didn’t commit the crime,” ABC News reported on Tuesday, June 9, 2021. Read story here.
“Several state lawmakers from both sides of the aisle signed a letter seeking a pardon for Strickland, who has maintained his innocence since he was convicted in the April 1978 deaths of three people in Kansas City,” ABC News said, adding, “Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has called for his release. Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, Jackson County’s presiding judge, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and members of the team that convicted Strickland also have said he should be exonerated.”
The governor’s office cited a backlog of 3,000 clemency petitions, and insinuated Strickland will have to wait his turn. One of the reasons for the backlog is that Parson has ignored pardon requests since assuming the office in 2018 following the resignation of his disgraced Republican predecessor, who’s now running for U.S. Senate.
ABC‘s story notes that Gov. Parson doesn’t have to review Strickland’s petition; all he has to do is sign a bill “approved this year … allowing innocence claims to be brought before trial courts when a prosecutor believes a prisoner is innocent. Baker has said that if the governor signs the bill, she’ll file a motion on the first day it is legally allowed to get Strickland released.”
The men who committed the crime said for years that Strickland wasn’t with them. He was convicted “by an all-white jury during a trial overseen by a white judge with white lawyers,” the Kansas City Star reported (as cited in the ABC News story).