Gov. Mike Parson raises an interesting, but not terribly well-informed, point about how Missouri’s criminal justice system works. Last week in a radio interview, he questioned why the state should be the one to compensate wrongfully convicted prisoners when county prosecutors are the ones responsible for sending innocent people to prison.
It’s a fair question. County prosecutors are the ones who receive criminal cases and weigh whether there’s adequate evidence to win a conviction. County prosecutors act as agents of the state in criminal cases, and it’s because they’re acting on the state’s behalf that they have the power to send a person to a state prison.
In an interview last week with Kansas City public radio, Parson was asked about compensation for wrongfully convicted people like Kevin Strickland, who spent 42 years in prison for a triple murder he didn’t commit. He was freed in November but didn’t receive a dime in state compensation.
