Missouri attorney general: Strickland is guilty of 3 murders

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Attorney General’s Office on Monday said it believes longtime inmate Kevin Strickland is guilty of killing three people in Kansas City and should remain in prison, despite several other prosecutors saying they believe he is innocent.

Assistant Attorney General Andrew Clarke argued in a motion filed Monday that Strickland, 62, was given a fair trial in 1979 and has “worked to evade responsibility” for the Kansas City killings since then, The Kansas City Star reported.

Also Monday, Circuit Judge Ryan Horsman set an evidentiary hearing in Strickland's case for Aug. 12-13. Horsman will hear arguments from Strickland's lawyers and the attorney general's office before deciding whether to free Strickland.

When the attorney general’s attorneys said the quick time frame could be a burden on the office, Horsman noted that Strickland has been “sitting in prison since before I was born.”

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced in May that her office believed the evidence used to convict Strickland in 1979 has since been “eviscerated.” Federal prosecutors, Jackson County's presiding judge and members of the team that convicted Strickland agreed he should be exonerated.

When the Missouri Supreme Court declined in June to hear Strickland's case, his attorneys refiled the case in DeKalb County, where Strickland is imprisoned.

Strickland, who was 18 at the time, was convicted in the April 25, 1978, deaths of John Walker, 20, Sherrie Black, 22, and Larry Ingram, 21.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt's office argued in Monday's motion that police said Strickland had offered Cynthia Douglas money the day of the killings to keep “her mouth shut,” which Clarke called a “tampering campaign” by Strickland.

The Jackson County prosecutor's...