Joshua Kezer praises pro bono work by lawyers

The day Josh Kezer was turned over to the Missouri Department of Corrections, four men bet cigarettes on how long it would be before he was raped or murdered.

He survived, but lived in a violent environment while serving 15 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit.

"What was done to me wasn't simply an error in judgment," Kezer told a group of lawyers Wednesday night. "It was an attempt on my life."

It took the help of St. Louis attorney Charlie Weiss, working without pay, to finally get Kezer released. Wednesday night at Washington University, Kezer called on more attorneys to do such work.

"Pro bono work shouldn't be a hobby," Kezer said. "It shouldn't be something you do on the side. It should be a career."

Kezer spoke at a reception at Washington University capping a day focusing on pro bono work sponsored by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. The groups were responding to the American Bar Association's call to focus on such work.

Earlier in the day, lawyers sat through seminars on pro bono work in cases related to immigration, foreclosures, orders of protection and other topics. But Kezer was Exhibit A in making the case for pro bono work in criminal cases.

Kezer had been serving a 60-year sentence at the Jefferson City Correctional Center for the 1992 killing of Angela Mischelle Lawless, a 19-year-old college student. Lawless was found shot to death in her car just off Interstate 55 near Benton, Mo.

No physical evidence linked Kezer to the crime. No one saw him do it, and in fact, witnesses said he was 350 miles away. Others said they saw the crime and Kezer wasn't there. Still he sat in jail.

But in February, a Cole County judge overturned Kezer's conviction for second-degree murder and armed criminal action, saying prosecutors had withheld evidence and a reasonable jury would not convict him based on new evidence.

That's the kind of pro bono work organizers want to encourage.

Pro bono work is about giving defendants "real access to the courts and real access to justice" regardless of ability to pay, said Jim Guest, director of the Volunteer Lawyers Program at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri.

Kezer's speech was also at times an indictment of lawyers and investigators who sometimes see trials as more about winning or losing than justice.

The people who sent him to prison for something he didn't do "went home and toasted their victory," he said. And the life he endured in prison is "the cost when you only care about the victory."

But Kezer, a deeply religious man, said he takes his inspiration from the forgiveness Christ exhibited on the cross.

"The only true closure you can have is when you forgive," he said. "You strip the tragedy of all of its power. If you want to know how I can stand before you today, it's because of that."