Midwestern Innocence Project 2009 Innocence Award

Partner Charlie Weiss was honored by the Midwestern Innocence Project with its 2009 Innocence Award. The award was presented to Weiss at the group’s April 22 benefit featuring John Grisham, the author of 21 best-selling books including The Innocent Man.

Weiss was honored for leading the pro bono effort which resulted in the exoneration of Josh Kezer, who had served 16 years in jail for a murder he did not commit. Others at Bryan Cave who worked on Kezer’s case were St. Louis Counsel Steve Snodgrass and Associates Jim Wyrsch, Dan Harvath and Chris Baucom. The team was instrumental in discovering new evidence that showed Kezer was innocent and that others committed the crime.

"There is little about this case which recommends our criminal justice system," Cole County Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan, a career prosecutor before becoming a judge, wrote in his scathing 45-page opinion overturning the murder charge. "The system failed in the investigative and charging stage, it failed at trial, it failed at the post trial review and it failed during the appellate process."

Kezer was convicted in the 1992 killing of Angela Mischelle Lawless, a 19-year-old college student. Lawless was found shot to death in her car at the top on an exit ramp, just off Interstate 55 near Benton, Mo. Despite the fact that there were no witnesses, no motive and no physical evidence to link Kezer to the crime, a jury convicted the then 18-year-old of the murder.

It was social worker Jane Williams who eventually began paging through Kezer’s case file, at his request, and found what she thought were obvious problems with the evidence. Eventually, Williams called an attorney she knew in Boston who referred it to the American College of Trial Lawyers in Missouri. The American College’s Access to Justice Committee referred the case to Weiss, a fellow in the College. After seeing the file for himself, Weiss decided to take the case.