Renowned civil rights attorney Kathleen Zellner was honored by Maryville University with the annual Sister Mary Byles Peace and Justice Prize in September. Zellner was recognized for her extraordinary success in wrongful conviction advocacy.
As part of the presentation, she delivered a brief lecture on her work, which includes representing Steven Avery, the subject of the popular Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer. Zellner is featured prominently in the program’s second season as she investigates Avery’s murder conviction and works toward his exoneration.
“We now have 2,270 exonerees in the United States, and a total of 20,080 years of people who served in our (usually) maximum security prisons that were completely innocent,” Zellner told the Maryville audience. “We have spent $2.2 billion compensating those people, which you can never really do, and half of them have never received a dime.”
Since opening her law office in 1991, Zellner has obtained more than $108 million in verdicts and settlements for her clients. She has the distinction of being the only attorney in the U.S. who won five multi-million-dollar verdicts in less than one year.