Kezer case reveals the sin of a nation

In 2008, a young but talented cops and courts reporter stepped into my office and told me she wanted to dig into the Angela Mischelle Lawless murder case.

A young managing editor myself, I knew this was an important decision, and I was apprehensive to pursue the subject. The 1992 case of a murdered nursing student from Southeast Missouri State University was being reopened by Sheriff Rick Walter in Scott County, a bold move. But did we really want to dive into the story and risk reopening old wounds?

I hesitated, and told Bridget DiCosmo, who had previously worked at an Innocence Project, that she could start looking into it, but I wasn't convinced that we wanted to publish anything. She persisted with updates and reminders, and finally after several weeks of digging into the case, flatly told me, "Bob, I've gone through the whole file. There is not one single piece of evidence that holds up."

So Bridget intensified her reporting and ultimately brought out the details that would explain to the public why, months later, a judge would throw out the murder conviction of Joshua Kezer. In fact, the judge did more than that, proclaiming "actual innocence" of Kezer.

Bridget's reporting and Kezer's story changed my mind on the death penalty.

If you're not familiar with the case, essentially Kezer was convicted on the testimony of three inmate snitches who cooked up a scheme, in exchange for lesser prison sentences, and told police Kezer had told them he had killed someone in Benton (though the snitches said it was Benton, Illinois, which didn't seem to matter to investigators.) All three, at one point or another, recanted their testimonies, saying they had only done so to reduce their jail time. Kezer was also "identified" in a lineup by a very questionable witness. Kezer was the only person in the lineup whose photo was emblazoned with the words "police department."

Then there was the dramatic prosecutor Kenny Hulshof, who lied when he told the jury in his closing statement that Kezer's jacket was covered in blood. And he completely mislead jurors in other aspects of his arguments. He also withheld evidence from the defense that the same witness who pointed out Kezer in a lineup had at one point identified a person he knew as a possible suspect. Kezer didn't even know Lawless. He had no motive.

Add it all together and, truly, you have the ingredients to "Making a Murderer."

After Kezer's tainted case was reopened by Walter, exposed in our paper and cleansed by the courts, I have paid much more attention to the death-penalty issue, and how wrongful convictions have trickled out to the masses, thanks in large part to the Innocence Project. I read John Grisham's "Innocent Man," a nonfiction story of a man wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of a woman in Oklahoma. He was sentenced to death, then later exonerated by DNA evidence. I listened to the entirety of the massively popular "Serial" podcast, a fascinating narrative produced by NPR's Sarah Koenig, that sheds light on shoddy defense attorney work and reasonable doubt in the killing of a teenage girl in 1999. The suspect in that case is serving a life sentence. Last week, I finished the Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer." None of these stories are any more egregious than Kezer's. Kezer didn't do it. I have zero doubt, and had his case been followed by a major media outlet or personality, his story would've resonated across the country, too. Space prohibits me to include all the overwhelming details here. You'll have to trust me, and the judge, when I say it was a disaster of justice. Kezer was sent off to prison as a teenager for a crime he did not commit, and was finally freed with gray hair. Fifteen years he spent in one of the toughest prisons in the land.

That brings me back to the death penalty. It's back on the front-burner of our political consciousness.

On Thursday, Kezer, who was not on death row but received a 60-year sentence, was in Jefferson City, Missouri, testifying against the death penalty. A bipartisan coalition sent a bill repealing Missouri's death penalty to the state Senate for debate.

It's a relief in some ways that the death-penalty debate is becoming less partisan. A growing number of Republicans are questioning the merits of the punishment. It's always puzzling to me how issues such as the death penalty are grouped into party affiliation rather than considered stand-alone issues.

For me, it's not a matter of whether a guilty murderer deserves the death penalty. The sad fact is that we have too much room for error. We have imperfect people investigating and prosecuting crimes. For too many law enforcement officials, but certainly not all of them or even most, their motives are not necessarily steered by justice, but rather, perhaps, to bring closure to a case, or closure for the victim's family; or even the fear of losing a big case, or maybe an insatiable appetite to win, even if justice is compromised. Juries are instructed to presume a person is innocent, even as the defendant is shackled in an orange jumpsuit in some cases.

It's sometimes easy to look at big-picture topics and tell yourself that this issue doesn't happen here, couldn't happen here. But it did.

And it happens all over the country.

Since 1992, the Innocence Project has helped produce 337 exonerations based on DNA, according to its website. And the organization can't keep up with the demands for its services.

Studies have shown that between 2.3 percent and 5 percent of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent, the organization reports, adding that if just 1 percent were innocent, that would mean more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison.

I don't know anyone who supports convicting innocent people, but it happens. It's woeful enough to send innocents to cages. It's the sin of a nation to kill them. It's just too much for a country that is built on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It's time to end the death penalty in Missouri.

Bob Miller is editor of the Southeast Missourian.

Read more about the Lawless case and Joshua Kezer at http://www.semissourian.com/coverage/lawless.