KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A hearing during which Kevin Strickland's attorneys would have argued his proclaimed innocence before a DeKalb County judge has been moved to November.
Judge Ryan Horsman was set to decide whether to free Strickland, who remains imprisoned for a 1978 triple murder in Kansas City that he maintains he did not commit, at the conclusion of the two-day evidentiary hearing initially scheduled for later this week.
Now that won't happen until a rescheduled three-day hearing from Nov. 17 to 19.
But before then, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker plans to file a motion later this month asking a judge in Kansas City to exonerate Strickland. That's when new legislation takes effect giving local prosecutors that power.
Strickland, 62, could be freed through that new avenue before November. During a hearing Monday in DeKalb County, Horsman wondered if the case in his court was a waste of resources, the St. Joseph News-Press reported.
Three months ago, Strickland received rare support from Jackson County prosecutors who concluded he is "factually innocent" in the April 25, 1978, shooting at 6934 S. Benton Ave. He was 18 when he was arrested.
Strickland's innocence claim has been in the courts since. His lawyers filed his petition in DeKalb County — where he remains behind bars at a prison in Cameron — after the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In recent weeks, the Missouri attorney general's office, which contends Strickland is guilty, has requested a host of records in the case. Its subpoenas included asking for all communications between the prosecutor's office and officials who joined their call for Strickland's exoneration, including Mayor Quinton Lucas and federal prosecutors in western Missouri.
The attorney general's office also requested any communication between the prosecutor's office and "any media outlet, including but not limited to the Kansas City Star," which has reported on Strickland's case extensively.
Jackson County prosecutors — who called the subpoenas "remarkable in their breadth and ambiguity" — objected to that request, arguing it asks for things not relevant to the case. Reporters contact the prosecutor's office every day, they argued.
"On its face, this request seeks every communication" between media outlets and the prosecutor's office's communications director since the office's inception, they said in court filings.
Local prosecutors said they would disclose evidence like police reports and witness statements, but asserted that other requests "seek only to divert attention from the critical issue at hand: whether Kevin Strickland is actually innocent."
The attorney general's office has since said it will narrow its requests. That included asking for the prosecutor's office's communication between media outlets from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present.
A pretrial conference in the case has been set for Oct. 14.
On the week Jackson County prosecutors intend to file their motion, a group of exonerees that recently started calling themselves the National Organization of Exonerees plans to travel to Jefferson City to hold a "rally for justice" for Strickland and Lamar Johnson, who St. Louis prosecutors say has been wrongly imprisoned for the past 26 years for a 1994 murder.
Two members of that group, Kenneth Nixon and Marvin Cotton, both of whom were exonerated of murder in Michigan, traveled to Missouri last month to show support for Strickland at a hearing.
At the time, they said they and other people freed after wrongful conviction were "shocked and appalled" by the fact Strickland and Johnson remain in prison though local prosecutors have deemed them innocent.
The group recently created a fundraiser to help pay for travel and lodging for about 40 to 50 people to attend the rally on the week of Aug. 30. It had raised $355 as of Tuesday afternoon.
