Fighting for freedom
Maureen (Smith) Lawrence worked on a Pennsylvania Innocence Project Case to free a man from prison three decades after being convicted for a crime he didn’t commit
By Ann Christenson, CJPA ’90
On a spring morning in 2015, Maureen (Smith) Lawrence traveled to SCI Huntingdon, a correctional facility in rural Pennsylvania. It was a three-plus-hour drive from her base in Philadelphia and while gazing out the car window, she was struck by the scenery, the green, rolling hills and even the prison, dating to the 1870s, with its well-manicured lawn and large trees.
It was an important drive for the lawyer. It was the first time she would meet Marshall Hale.
She and two colleagues walked into the visitor’s room where inmates were meeting with their families and friends. They spotted an area with puzzles and small games for children. “I tried to imagine what it must be like for families with young children visiting a parent or other family member,” she recalls.
When Hale was brought into the room, he welcomed the three lawyers with “big hugs and a smile,” she says. He had been incarcerated for more than three decades for a crime he didn’t commit.
Recently Hale recalled that moment: “It was unbelievable to have them come in and represent me pro bono,” he says. “It was like a prayer answered. It was like a dream come true.”
Lawrence, Arts ’03, and colleagues John Summers and Dina Grove — all from Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller — joined forces with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project in 2015 to fight for Hale.
It was five years after the Innocence Project had agreed to take the case and 31 years since Hale was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl at gunpoint in Philadelphia. The crime was committed before DNA testing was possible. The only evidence linking Hale, then 21, to the crime was the young victim’s identification of him as her rapist. Although Hale didn’t meet the victim’s initial physical description of her attacker, she identified him in police photos two months after the crime, and he was eventually found guilty by a jury.
Lawrence was a child when the crime was committed in 1983. As she tunneled into the case during months of research, she and her team were troubled at the thought of each night Hale had slept in a prison cell while they were able to go home to their families.
Hale had never given up hope of being freed, she says, but he couldn’t argue the case on his own. He had filed petitions with the court to get access to evidence that was withheld at trial and for DNA testing. But it wasn’t that easy.
It was later discovered that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had either lost or destroyed evidence from the trial, making DNA testing impossible. Written lab notes of the blood testing done at the time of trial, which Hale did not receive until more than a decade after he was convicted, contained evidence that would have “excluded Hale as a suspect,” a point Summers, Grove and Lawrence argued in their appeal as well as in a 2017 article they wrote and published in Bloomberg Law.
The Hale case stoked a fire in Lawrence, and a commitment to fight for justice. Grove, who worked closely with Lawrence on the case, credits her colleague for handling much of the legal research. “She was an expert on the facts,” Grove says. “She was the one who laid it out clearly. She dug in knowing how crucial it was we get it right.”
Summers agrees: “She digs harder when she doesn’t know something. Those are the people who make good lawyers.”
Lawrence followed in her mother’s college footsteps by choosing Marquette. Once on campus she dove into Campus Ministry programs, including retreats and Midnight Run, which engaged students with Milwaukee’s homeless community. She also served as an RA in McCormick Hall and went on to be vice president of the student government.
She graduated with a degree in history and political science and took a two-year fellowship with a Colorado foundation committed to developing young professionals into leaders, before enrolling in Columbus School of Law at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
After a federal clerkship and practicing law in D.C. for a couple of years, she joined Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller in 2012 as an antitrust lawyer but maintained her desire to advocate for the underserved and voiceless. Living out her mother’s example of “engaging in the community around me,” she says, led her to CASA of Philadelphia County, an organization that trains volunteers to advocate for abused and neglected children in the city’s foster care system.
The opportunity to advocate for someone who was wrongly convicted of a felony found her. It was Summers, an officer on the Innocence Project Board of Directors, who took on the Hale appeal and brought Lawrence and Grove on board.
Doing pro bono legal work is crucial, says Lawrence. “We have a unique skill set to offer — even without a criminal law background — and working on a case like this brings a richness to my practice. Marshall, from day one, was always professing his innocence and never gave up,” she says.
She had faith in him.
Marissa Bluestine, executive director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, was with Lawrence for the initial prison consultation with Hale. “I can visualize her in the room talking and leaning in to him,” Bluestine says, remembering that day. “We have a lot of lawyers who are happy to draft letters, but she made it clear she wanted to meet him in person.”
From the very beginning, Lawrence says, she knew this case would be different. “Unlike cases with large teams of attorneys litigating high-stakes business disputes for clients, this case was a really wonderful opportunity to work closely with a small team to fight for the injustice suffered by one individual. It was a new experience and a challenging one.”
The Pennsylvania Innocence Project petitioned for post-conviction release. The petition was opposed by the city’s district attorney’s office and dismissed on technical grounds by a Pennsylvania court. Hale’s team was undeterred.
In May 2015, the team appealed the trial court’s decision, asserting that the court had misapplied the law and misunderstood the importance of the forensic evidence uncovered 13 years after Hale’s conviction. This time, the Pennsylvania Superior Court sided with Hale. It reversed the trial court decision. Following additional negotiations with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit, Hale was released in July 2017.
Lawrence was there the day Hale left prison. She, Bluestine and a colleague from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, met Hale’s sons, daughter-in-law, grandchildren and other relatives where they waited outside, in front of the prison. In time, a large metal garage door opened and they saw Hale walking down a long hallway, carrying a paper bag of personal items.
“An honor,” is how Lawrence describes what it felt like to witness Hale’s first moments of freedom. “I could only imagine how he must have felt in that moment,” she says.
Family and friends and lawyers stood in the parking lot, hugging, crying and saying prayers of thanks. Lawrence has a photo from that day. It’s of four people — Hale is flanked by two Pennsylvania Innocence Project attorneys on his left and Lawrence on his right. Her body language is just as Bluestine described it on the day they met Hale at the prison. She is leaning in, this time in joy.
She stays in touch with Hale and hopes that continues.
“Marshall is doing well. But there will always be a bittersweet component for me; despite the tremendous joy of his release, he still faces other challenges resulting from spending so much of his life in prison. The tragedy is that his situation is not unique, and that wrongful convictions also happen to others,” she says.
