(Photos: Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock.com)
Entrepreneur and criminal justice advocate Kim Kardashian West is once again using her platform to help prisoners who may’ve been wrongfully convicted.
This time, she’s throwing her support behind rap artist Corey Miller (aka C-Murder) who is serving a mandatory life sentence after being convicted in 2009 of killing 16-year-old fan Steve Thomas at a nightclub.
On January 18, 2002 a tragedy occurred when a young man was killed. The next day Corey Miller was arrested for the murder.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) August 16, 2020
In a series of Twitter posts, Kim has announced that she’s teaming up with R&B singer Monica, Corey’s ex-partner who’s been working to overturn the conviction based on new evidence and the fact that he was convicted by a non-unanimous jury:
“The jury convicted Corey 10 – 2 and he was sentenced him (sic) to life in prison. If his trial was today, the jury would have had to be unanimous for him to be convicted,” Kim posted on Twitter, referring to a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that found non-unanimous jury verdicts unconstitutional in serious criminal cases.
“Since his trial, witnesses have recanted, new evidence of his potential innocence has come to light and there are claims of jurors being pressured into voting to convict,” Kim continues.
“Corey deserves to come home to his girls and be the father they need, be the artist & leader he’s always been as well as spread hope to those who have also experienced this,” Monica shared on her socials.
View this post on Instagram
But Trey Mustian, a lawyer for Steve Thomas’ parents has told ABC News he thinks otherwise:
“My take on Kim Kardashian is I think she’s probably well-intentioned. I don’t think she has any malicious intent or anything toward my clients but I think she is missing a lot of the facts about this case…I am convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that he [Corey Miller] killed Steve Thomas.”
View this post on Instagram
This isn’t the first time Kim has used her platform to bring attention to prisoners she believes were unjustly sentenced or wrongfully convicted.
In 2018, she petitioned U.S. President Donald Trump to free 63-year-old grandmother Alice Marie Johnson who was given a life sentence for a non-violent drug offence.
And in 2019, Kim put the spotlight on Momolu Stewart who was tried as an adult despite being 16 years old at the time of the offence – he was eventually freed after serving 23 years of his sentence.
There have been countless others she has also helped, as part of her mission to promote criminal justice reform, all while filming her reality show KUWTK and studying to become a lawyer too.