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  • The Marshall Project

    A Year After Prison, He Has a Job, a Fiancée—And a Week Left of Freedom

    Richard Midkiff spent 23 years behind bars. A dispute over his decades-old plea deal could send him back for 15 more.
    by Eli Hager Jul 12, 2020 7 minutes

    By the time Richard Midkiff walked out of a Florida prison last year at age 42, he had spent more than half his life behind bars for a crime he committed when he was 19.

    Midkiff has now restarted his life: A full-time paralegal in Ocala, Florida, and the president of the board of a national organization providing legal help to incarcerated people, he begins his busy workdays at 5 a.m. And last month, he proposed to his fiancée, Marianna Kuchma, on the beach.

    But Midkiff may not have his freedom much longer. Because of a legal dispute over the wording of his 1997 plea agreement for his role in a murder—and despite the fact that he has not committed any new offenses—a Florida court on July 2 ordered him to report back to the Department of Corrections to spend 15 more years in prison. He was given 15 days to challenge the decision.

    In its ruling, the 5th District Court of Appeal noted that Midkiff was a legal adult at the time of his crime, not a juvenile deserving of more lenient treatment. At the same time, the court

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