See the title? Can we all agree that  Kevin Strickland is still in prison, forty-three years later, because he’s black? Put it this way, would a white dentist, wrongly convicted and having spent 43 years in prison, not have been pardoned immediately and released that day? Come on.

One has to be really innocent when prosecutors are fighting to get a man released. You might say “What’s to fight? Put a motion in front of a judge and get him released that day.” That would work if judges didn’t get 400 letters a day from people claiming the same thing, admittedly, not many are signed off on by the prosecution. But as Donald Trump showed with all his friends, especially the unquestionably guilty ones, a pardon is the quickest way.

From the KCUR:38

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson passed on an opportunity to release a Kansas City man who has spent 43 years behind bars for a crime prosecutors say he did not commit. Parson left Kevin Strickland off the latest list of pardons.

As a human being, can you not imagine reading something at 2:00 a.m. alerting you to this issue and demanding that your staff meet you at 3:00 a.m., P.J.’s allowed, and prepare something to fix this by 8:00 a.m.? How does a human being not do so? Racism.

“It’s hard to imagine how everyone can know someone’s innocent and he’s still there,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, director of the Midwest Innocence Project. “At this point, no one with power has done the things to let him out.

It is hard to imagine. But the question is that it’s hard to imagine someone that racist. Have no doubt, this is a signal to white MAGAs in Missouri, “We still run the show, and no one’s going to kick us around.”

Last month, after reviewing evidence that emerged since the murders, the prosecutor’s office said Strickland is innocent and should be set free. Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, Jackson County’s presiding judge and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas agreed.

In other words, every single person who knows anything about the case agrees that this man should go free. The Governor, Parsons, knows less about the case than all of them, but as the one with the power to let him go tomorrow morning, chose to keep him in prison.

Strickland’s team, led by the Midwest Innocence Project and international law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, has now filed the same motion denied a hearing by the Missouri Supreme Court, in the Circuit Court in DeKalb County where Strickland is being held in the Western Missouri Correctional Center.

“Denied a hearing.” Supreme Court judges are elected, too. See, this is the problem, everyone can know, we mean know that the man is innocent, but if the judge currently handling the case doesn’t want to be the judge forever known as the guy that set the black man convicted of capitol murder free, even if he didn’t do it, doesn’t sign the order? Only the governor can do it unless reversed by the appellate courts in Missouri.

Reversing judgments are very hard. A judge doesn’t even need to grant an evidentiary hearing and can deny it on its face without hearing from anyone. Additionally, every single judge worries that they will be the one who lets the wrong guy go free who then goes on to hurt someone again. And since he’s black, easier to just leave him in jail.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said her office will file an amicus brief, also known as a friend of the court brief, in DeKalb County.

Having the prosecution on your side makes all the difference. It is a red light flashing, there is something very wrong here. Too bad that some have trouble seeing how a black man removed from society and held in a prison for 43 years while innocent isn’t some huge or immediate problem.

No, Biden cannot pardon a person for a state crime. A federal judge might be able to hear a habeas corpus hearing, but those are generally very time barred. So there Mr. Strickland sits, as innocent as you and me, just a different color.

RACISM IN AMERICA.

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