KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A judge in Jackson County has denied a motion by the Missouri attorney general’s office seeking additional fingerprint testing in the murder case that landed Kevin Strickland in prison.
Judge Kevin Harrell denied the request that sought testing of unexamined fingerprint cards, saying there had been “more than sufficient time and opportunity” for the attorney general to have asked for the analysis.
Jackson County prosecutors, who are seeking to exonerate and free Strickland, said the Kansas City Police Department told the attorney general’s office about the fingerprint cards in August and that a full comparison of them would take two months. The attorney general’s office did not seek testing then and said it was ready to defend Strickland’s conviction, local prosecutors said.
“The critical fingerprints — those on the murder weapon — have already been tested and they exclude Kevin Strickland,” lawyers in prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s office wrote, arguing the motion was “nothing but a delay tactic to deny” Strickland his day in court.
In making the request, the attorney general’s office accused Baker’s office of not testing the remaining fingerprints — which local prosecutors say are from unknown locations — for “apparently strategic reasons.”
Additional fingerprint testing, the judge said in his order, would “frustrate” participants in resolving the case promptly.
Harrell said the denial does not prevent the attorney general from meaningfully participating in Strickland’s Tuesday evidentiary hearing, during which Jackson County prosecutors will argue he has been wrongly imprisoned for more than 40 years.
More than 140 days ago, Strickland received rare public support from Baker, who said her office had concluded Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested and is now 62, is “factually innocent” in the April 25, 1978, shooting at 6934 S. Benton Ave. in Kansas City.
The gunfire took the lives of John Walker, 20, Sherrie Black, 22, and Larry Ingram, 21.
The attorney general’s office, under Eric Schmitt, contends Strickland is guilty and that he received a fair trial in 1979.
Prosecutors at trial claimed Strickland carried a shotgun during the murders and elicited testimony that no fingerprints on the weapon could be compared. But forensic testing done this year shows a fingerprint found on the gun is not Strickland’s.
In another recent decision, Harrell granted the attorney general’s request to compel discovery from Baker’s office, ordering prosecutors to produce their notes taken during an interview with Eric Wesson, publisher of The Call newspaper in Kansas City.
Wesson was friends with the lone eyewitness to the murders. She died in 2015, but Wesson told The Star she tried to recant her identification of Strickland — the most incriminating evidence at his trial — twice to The Call.
Last week, Schmitt’s office appealed Harrell’s decision to not recuse himself and disqualify other judges in Jackson County from hearing Baker’s office argue Strickland is innocent. It contended there is an appearance of bias in the 16th Circuit Court.
The Missouri Supreme Court had not ruled on that appeal as of Thursday afternoon.
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