Kevin Strickland, who has maintained his innocence through 43 years in prison for a triple murder, got an opportunity to testify at a three-day hearing that could lead to his release.

Strickland, 62, was convicted on one count of capital murder and two counts of second-degree murder when four people were shot in Kansas City in 1978. The only person who survived, Cynthia Douglas, who died in 2015, testified Strickland was at the scene.

Strickland has been an inmate at the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, but never changed his story of innocence. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker agrees.

MAIP, which worked with the University of Baltimore Innocence Project Clinic (UBIPC) and the Conviction Integrity Unit at the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, said Morris' conviction was based on circumstantial and flimsy evidence.

"The only evidence linking Mr. Morris to the crime was the statement of KL, who was driving with two other passengers when he saw the crime taking place, at dusk and in the rain," MAIP said in a statement.

KL pointed out Morris as he sat on a front porch near the scene of the crime, and on that day in 2004, Morris was " immediately arrested and hasn’t been home since," the organization said.

The Innocence Project groups brought Morris' case to the state's attorney in 2018. He is the 40th person the Mid-Atlantic group has freed from wrongful incarceration since 2000.

Armbrust said MAIP has many cases awaiting ruling, but the "sad reality" of innocence projects like theirs is that there are few prosecutors willing to look at the "facts of the cases," as happened in Morris' case.

Armbrust said that it takes about seven and a half years to prove a wrongfully convicted person's innocence when the case has to be litigated before a judge, but that the process takes about a year when a prosecutor endorses the investigation.

Source: NBCNEWS