Poston helps free wrongfully accused Kezer
Poston devoted his Master's project to investigating Kezer's conviction.
Published Feb. 23, 2009
According to the Missouri Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct, an attorney is a public citizen responsible for the quality of justice and improving the services provided by the legal profession.
Joshua Kezer, who was exonerated Feb. 17 for a 1994 murder conviction, can thank an MU graduate for upholding these values.
Ben Poston, who completed the School of Journalism's graduate program in 2007, spent four months researching Kezer's case and devoted his master's project to investigating the circumstances that led to Kezer's 15-year wrongful incarceration.
Cole County Judge Richard Callahan overturned Kezer's second-degree murder and armed criminal action convictions.
Poston began his investigation in MU journalism professor Steve Weinberg's criminal justice journalism class. He read through the 1,200-page brief, interviewed Kezer in prison, visited the murder scene and met with the Cole County Sheriff's Department.
The process was not easy, he said.
"It's been two and a half years since I first looked into the case, and it still makes my head spin," Poston said. "Everything that could go wrong for Josh Kezer went wrong."
On Nov. 8, 1992, Angela Lawless, a 19-year-old college student, was found shot to death in her car near Interstate 55 near Benton. During the course of the investigation, Kezer was named as a suspect based on testimony given by an eyewitness who later recanted the statement.
The witness said Kezer had an altercation with Lawless the week before at a Halloween party, but witnesses at the party did not know Kezer. Although alibi witnesses' testimony that Kezer was 350 miles away in Kankakee, Ill., the night of the murder, the witnesses were discredited during the trial by the prosecution.
Attorney Charles Weiss of the Bryan Cave Law Firm said the prosecution was unable to present any physical evidence to link Kezer to the crime scene.
Weiss said the case against Kezer was based on the depositions of three "snitch witnesses" from the Cape Girardeau jail who testified against Kezer in exchange for leniency in their own sentences. One of these three witnesses later recanted his statement and gave testimony for Kezer at trial, saying the three had fabricated their testimonies.
Weiss said Mark Abbott, the eyewitness for the prosecution, gave untrue and conflicting statements about the night of the murder. Abbott is serving a 20-year prison sentence in a federal penitentiary in Wisconsin.
Weiss was part of a team that looked into the Kezer case after Jane Williams, a Columbia social worker, was galvanized into action after meeting with Kezer in prison and hearing the facts of the case and conviction. Williams could not initially find attorneys to represent the Kezer family, so she contacted the American College of Trial Lawyers in Boston, who contacted Bryan Cave Law Firm.
Williams provided the firm with a transcript of the Kezer trial.
"After reading this transcript, we believed that this man was wrongfully convicted," Weiss said.
Poston contributed to the effort by publishing his own findings as a freelance journalist in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Although an integral part of the movement to free Kezer, Poston remains modest about his role.
"His attorneys at Bryan Cave Law Firm in St. Louis and Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter deserve all the credit," Poston said. "I just brought light to the issue, which is my job as a journalist."
Weinberg praised Poston's conduct as a journalist.
"I can't even find the right adjectives to describe how great he was," Weinberg said. "I just think he was amazing."
Weinberg, who is also a professional freelance journalist, has investigated several wrongful conviction cases in the past.
"If journalists were doing their job from the start, we'd have a lot less wrongful convictions," he said.
Poston is now a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
