Lawyer with Jackson ties honored for pro bono work

For more than a decade's worth of pro bono work, fighting for the release of 11 battered Missouri women serving disproportionate sentences for murder, Amy Lorenz-Moser got a text message.

The 1993 Jackson High School graduate won't complain, though, because it reminded her of all the hard work she did and the difference she made in the lives of three of those women. Lorenz-Moser remembers crying when she received the message pumping gas at a convenience store in December.

"Thank-you for getting me my life back," said the message, sent by Vicky Williams, who was paroled in October with the help of Lorenz-Moser and the Missouri Battered Women's Clemency Coalition.

Williams, like Carlene Borden and Lynda Branch -- the other two women Lorenz-Moser helped get released -- were battered women, abused one way or another by their spouse, and convicted of killing their husbands before Missouri law allowed evidence of domestic abuse to be presented at trial.

Lorenz-Moser said such evidence was inadmissible before a law was passed in 1987, after all three women were tried and convicted.

Borden was released in October after more than 30 years in prison, and Branch was paroled in 2007 after 20 years behind bars.

"Ultimately, it was a long-shot from the very beginning," said Lorenz-Moser, a product liability lawyer at Armstrong Teasdale in St. Louis. "We kept the pressure on, though, and eventually got a good result."

The results took 11 years, but the public service paid off recently when Missouri Lawyers Weekly, on Dec. 26, named the University of Missouri School of Law graduate Lawyer of the Year for 2010.

Lorenz-Moser didn't find out about the honor immediately and said she didn't even know she was nominated.

"I was at the jail meeting with a new client -- a battered woman," she said. "I thought I had been nominated for a different award. It was a huge honor; it was shocking."

Looking back at her accomplishments, Lorenz-Moser, 35, recalls law school being her backup plan. She began college at Webster University as a music major, with an emphasis in opera. Although she said she didn't enjoy opera classes as much as she initially thought she would, it was seeing a line cook in the university's cafeteria be beaten by her significant other that convinced Lorenz-Moser to change her course of study.

"You could hear her screaming," she said. "I told her I would be a witness for her, but it was the very last thing she wanted. It really gave me a lot of conviction that that was an area I could help in."

Given a mission

As a law student, Lorenz-Moser applied to join the university's clemency coalition, which accepted only seven students a semester. Once accepted, it wasn't long before she was given her mission: write clemency petitions for 11 battered women serving life sentences, without the possibility of parole, for murdering their spouses.

By collecting court filings and medical records, Lorenz-Moser learned Branch was repeatedly abused and that her husband threatened to shoot her. Williams' husband raped her and forced her to bring him sexual partners. Borden, also frequently beaten, suffered black eyes and a broken nose. Domestic abuse wasn't a defense at the time of their trials, Lorenz-Moser said.

So she wrote petition after petition, attended parole hearings and continued to get denied. Lorenz-Moser figures she logged 1,000 hours working the pro bono cases, and the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, she said, gave little reason for its denial, except that clemency would depreciate the seriousness of the women's crimes. Lorenz-Moser even sued the board, three times, in the cases of Williams and Borden.

"When [board members] were pressed for answers, it was clear they didn't have a good reason," Lorenz-Moser said. "I think that there's a lack of understanding of domestic violence in some areas of our society."

Also helping Borden and Williams' case was a revised Missouri law passed in 2007, which gave parole eligibility to individuals charged with spousal homicide before December 1990 and serving more than 50 years. Lorenz-Moser said that made four women, including her two clients, in Missouri eligible for parole.

"It was directed at them," she said.

Already a new case

But even without the revised statute, Lorenz-Moser said, she wouldn't have given up. After reading all the documents, hearing the women's 911 calls and the fear in their voices, and seeing photographs of the abuse they suffered, she said she had to help them.

"I took a new case as soon as their petitions were granted," Lorenz-Moser said. "It's hard to explain, I see a situation like that, and I don't feel like it's right to sit by and do nothing."

Her newest pro bono case involves a Missouri woman imprisoned for nine years. She also was convicted of murdering her spouse, but Lorenz-Moser said there's "incredible photographic evidence" that the woman was abused.

"It's absolutely shocking," she said. "There are some with her eyes blackened, her face smashed. The guy took pliers and ripped her toe open."

Although Lorenz-Moser is in court nearly every day with cases in which she represents companies that have a consumer alleging their product was defective, she doesn't intend on holding off on her pro bono work.

"As long as these cases are out there, I'll do it," she said. "I hope one day I'm completely put out of business."

ehevern@semissourian.com

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