A Kansas City man who has been jailed for more than 40 years for three murders was wrongfully convicted in 1979 and will be released, a Missouri judge ruled Tuesday.

Kevin Strickland, 62, has always maintained that he was home watching television and had nothing to do with the killings, which happened when he was 18 years old.

Judge James Welsh, a retired Missouri Court of Appeals judge, ruled after a three-day evidentiary hearing requested by a Jackson County prosecutor who said evidence used to convict Strickland in 1979 had since been recanted or disproven.

Welsh wrote in his judgement that...