‘You can’t catch those 43 years’: exonerated former prisoner tries to start life anew

A new Missouri bill could make Kevin Strickland and other exonerees eligible for restitution payments

It's been more than two weeks since Kevin Strickland was released from the Western Missouri correctional center and now he often wakes at 3.30am, long before the dawn, with an urge to get outside.

For 43 years of a sentence under a former Missouri law known as the Hard 50" - which required Strickland to serve at least 50 years before he would be eligible for parole - that was an impossibility.