Missouri Gives Strickland His Freedom, But No Compensation For Decades Lost In Prison - Ali Velshi

[markpkessinger]

3. That's great, but . . .

. . . it was the state of Missouri that stole most of this man's life from him. And they should be required to compensate him for that.

Missouri has a compensation law for exonerees, but they are only eligible if they can prove their innocence using DNA evidence. The crime Mr. Strickland was accused of occurred in 1979, when police departments weren't even collecting DNA samples from crime scenes. So to qualify for compensation, an exoneree first has to prove he didn't commit the crime (and proving a negative is nearly impossible in most cases), using evidence that wasn't collected at the time in any case. It's an outrageous injustice!