LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — A judge's decision on Tuesday to release longtime inmate Kevin Strickland, of Kansas City, was made possible by a new Missouri law intended to free people who were imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit.

Strickland, 62, was convicted in 1979 of a triple murder in Kansas City. He always maintained that he wasn't he wasn't at the crime scene, and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced in May that her office's review of case convinced her that Strickland was telling the truth.

After the Missouri Supreme Court in June declined to hear Strickland's petition for...