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On the morning of the murders he was at a sheriff's office, filling in paperwork, with his name on a form and his face in front of deputies. Ricky Kidd was applying for a gun permit. He still got life without parole. Kansas City, Missouri, February 1996. Two men were shot dead. Ricky Kidd was arrested and charged. His alibi was not a friend, or a girlfriend, or somebody who owed him. His alibi was a law enforcement agency, because that morning he had been at the Jackson County sheriff's office applying for a permit to buy a handgun, and then at a child's birthday party. There was paperwork. There were people. He was convicted anyway and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. What came out over the following years: witnesses who identified him later recanted; other men were implicated by evidence that was available at the time; and material that should have gone to his defence did not. He spent his time inside learning law and working on his own case, and he became known for helping other prisoners with theirs. In August 2019 a judge granted him a writ of habeas corpus and he walked out after twenty-three years.** Prosecutors did not retry him. He has since founded an organisation working on wrongful convictions, and he speaks publicly about it. A man went to a government office, in daylight, and gave his name to a sheriff's deputy on a form. That is about as documented as an alibi can get. If you were designing the most verifiable possible account of your own whereabouts, you could not do much better. It did not work. And everybody reading this who has ever thought *well, I would be fine, because I could just prove where I was* — Ricky Kidd could prove where he was. He lost twenty-three years anyway. Discover the cases that expose the devastating cost of injustice—and the lives left waiting for answers. Get our book savvypurchase.samcart.com/pr…