State Sen. Steven Roberts, a St. Louis Democrat, sponsored the wrongful conviction restoration bill (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
For the 43 years Kevin Strickland spent behind bars in Missouri for a triple murder he didn’t commit, he received no compensation from the state.
“It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to lose your life,” Strickland, who was released in 2021, testified at a state Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday morning.
Strickland was convicted in 1979, a year after being arrested and sentenced to life in prison based on witness testimony that was later recanted. He didn’t regain his freedom until Jackson County prosecutors moved to exonerate him in 2021, under a state law passed that year giving prosecutors a pathway to present evidence of innocence to a judge.
“I lost everything…I never had the opportunity to become the person I should be today,” he testified, adding that his daughter was a few weeks old and he was about to enter the military when he was arrested, and he suffers from medical issues that went poorly treated in prison.
Missouri law only allows for payments to prisoners who prove their innocence through specific DNA testing — which severely limits the types of cases where the wrongfully convicted can receive restitution.
Missouri state senators on Wednesday held a public hearing on a bill that would expand who could qualify for restitution after a wrongful conviction, and increase the payment amounts.
“These individuals leave prison now with no resources to aid their transition back into society,” said state Sen. Steve Roberts, a St. Louis Democrat who sponsored the bill, “and this bill would provide them with the legitimate opportunity to lead productive lives following egregious errors made by the state at their expense.”
Strickland and another exonerated man, Joseph Amrine, along with a handful of advocacy organizations, testified in support of the bill. Only one person, representing the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, testified in opposition, arguing the standard of evidence to qualify for restitution in the bill was too broad.
The legislation would allow a claim for damages to be filed within two years of being freed from prison. A judge can order payment of $179 per day for each day of imprisonment, capped at $65,000 per fiscal year. The restitution would be made as a combination of an initial payment not to exceed $100,000 or 25% of the award, whichever is greater. The remainder of the damages would be paid as an annuity not to exceed $80,000 per year.
The law would be similar to one approved by Kansas lawmakers in 2018.
Similar bills have been filed for the last several years. In 2023, a version of the legislation was included in a large crime package that then-Gov. Mike Parson vetoed. In a letter explaining his veto, Parson wrote that crimes are investigated and prosecuted locally and that juries and judges are from the community where the person was tried and convicted. He objected to the state being made to pay for the mistakes.
While Amrine serving a sentence in prison for a robbery conviction, he was charged with murdering another inmate.
The witnesses who led to his murder conviction later recanted. When Amrine was exonerated in 2003 after spending 17 years on Missouri’s death row, “there was nothing available to me,” he testified Wednesday.
“I’ve been struggling since I got out,” Amrine said. “A lot of people don’t understand it: mentally, physically, financially, you know, you need all the help you can get.”
“The state looks at it like, you know, you were exonerated, let you go and that’s it,” he said. “Whereas I feel like the state is really responsible for me being wrongly convicted, so I think they are responsible to help me to deal with things I’ve been through.”
In lieu of compensation from the state, exonerees often must rely on charity.
When Strickland was exonerated in December 2021, The Midwest Innocence Project set up the GoFundMe page for him that raised $1.7 million.
Strickland always maintained he was home watching television and had nothing to do with the murders that sent him to prison when he was 18. The key witness eventually recanted her testimony, and no physical evidence ever tied Strickland to the crime scene.
“I strongly support this legislation because it will provide me and other wrongly convicted people in Missouri, with the support necessary to rebuild — check ‘rebuild,’ I’m going to start with ‘build.’ I never had a life. They took mine at 18 after suffering a terrible injustice of being incarcerated as an innocent person,” Strickland said.
“Even though I’m home, life’s not easy,” he said.
Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, which represented Strickland and other wrongfully convicted people, said she has “had the misfortune of walking someone out of prison and directly into a homeless shelter.”
“Because the wrongfully convicted get out of prison with no money, no job experience, no credit, no access to housing, transportation, health insurance, many life necessities that we all take for granted, everyday living becomes an obstacle itself,” she said.
Cole County Prosecutor Locke Thompson was the only person to testify in opposition, speaking on behalf of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.
“I do want to say that in spirit, we actually, we do support the concept of the bill,” Thompson said. “However, some of the language in there would allow for payments to individuals not found to be actually innocent.”
Actual innocence requires a more rigorous burden of proof — “clear and convincing” evidence — than the preponderance of evidence in the bill, he said.
“Based on the language that we have here right now,” Thompson said, “we’re opposed.”
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