Kenneth Lawson

Lawson was born on April 19, 1963, in Cincinnati[1] and raised in an orphanage until he was three years old,[2] when he was adopted by Etta and Lawyer Lawson. Lawson is biracial, with a Black biological father and an Italian biological mother, but his adoptive family did not tell him.[1] He grew up in the neighborhoods of Avondale, Lincoln Heights, and Woodlawn.[1]

Lawson attended Princeton High School, where he played on the football team as middle linebacker, graduating in 1981.[1] He met his future wife Marva at the school. After graduating, Lawson went to Wittenberg College.[1] The Cincinnati Enquirer reported in 1998 that Lawson attended Wittenberg for a year before running out of money and returning to Cincinnati;[1] Lawson stated in 2020 that he actually attended for two years before being expelled for fighting while drunk.[3] He returned to Cincinnati and was considering joining the Air Force when he learned that he had qualified for financial aid[1] or was allowed to return on probation.[3] He then resumed college at Wittenberg, where he was joined by Marva after the birth of their first child. The couple married and worked to support themselves through college.[1] He obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Wittenberg College in 1986 and a Juris Doctor from University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1989.[4]

In 1990, he began looking for his biological family, and discovered through Catholic Social Services that he had been born at Longview State Hospital, a mental institution.[3] After searching through library and probate records, he located his biological mother, named Stella Angelo. Lawson learned that Angelo's uncle had broken her clavicle because of her relationship with a Black man, that Angelo was four months pregnant with him when she was sent to Longview State Hospital, and that she was released after he was born. He additionally learned that Angelo had been a prostitute for parts of her life.[1] During Lawson's search for his birth parents, a cousin had told him that his biological father was Ezzard Charles, but no documentation was found to confirm paternity and Stella Angelo did not confirm it before her death in 1993.[1]

After becoming licensed to practice law in Ohio in 1989, Lawson began working as a lawyer in Cincinnati.[5] He was the first African American lawyer at Taft Stettinius & Hollister,[2] but left to start his own practice because the job "paid well but left [him] feeling empty".[6] He founded a criminal defense law practice called Lawson and Associates in 1993.[2] As of 2000, Lawson hosted a Saturday morning radio program called "Lawson's Law" on WCIN-AM.[2] Joe Deters criticized him in a Cincinnati Enquirer profile for not defending the office of the Hamilton County prosecutor when callers on Lawson's Law spoke critically about the office, saying that he liked Lawson on "a personal level" but that Lawson was failing to use his "unique opportunity" to teach the Black community about "the realities of the court system", and concluding that his "reluctance" to do so was the only thing preventing him "from being a great lawyer and a great citizen".[1] Lawson was criticized for unprofessionalism by some other attorneys, and acknowledged being disliked by some police officers. He represented clients in multiple cases related to the police, including the family of Lorenzo Collins, who was shot and killed by Cincinnati police while threatening officers with a brick; marches protesting the killing of Collins were organized in part by Lawson.[1]

Lawson additionally represented high-profile clients including Deion Sanders, Danny Fortson, and Aaron Pryor.[1] However, he has stated that he still did not feel happy or satisfied.[3][6] He began drinking and partying more often, and was kicked out of the house by his wife, moving in with his brother George Lawson who worked for him at the time. After returning home for a few days in an attempt to convince his wife to let him live there again, Lawson was unable to reach his brother, and found that he had killed himself in their shared condo.[3] This suicide occurred three days before the start of a trial in which Kenneth Lawson would defend a teen from West End who had killed a pregnant woman and her unborn child in a car accident.[1] Lawson subsequently moved back in with his family.[3]

In the year 2000, Lawson says he tore his rotator cuff while weightlifting, and was prescribed the drugs Percodan and Percocet for pain management. He disregarded the instructions of his physician, taking as many pills as he felt was necessary and eventually finding a doctor who would sell him prescriptions. He additionally bought prescription medication off the street. In his last two years of using drugs, Lawson states that they were costing him $1,000 per day and that he needed at least one prescription per day because his tolerance had increased so much. He additionally states that he recognized that he was addicted to opioids and cocaine as well as to alcohol, but was unable to stop on his own, and ended up stealing money from clients and lying to judges and his family as a result.[6]

In 2007, a judge recognized that Lawson was abusing substances, and "blew the whistle" on him.[6] Lawson checked himself into a detox facility on February 1 of that year,[3] and stated in March 2019 that he had not used drugs or alcohol since then.[6] Former clients subsequently filed motions and complaints because of Lawson's behavior while using drugs, at which point he says that he learned that he did not remember representing some of them; multiple cases were overturned as a result.[6]

After Lawson was released from prison and moved to Hawaii, Randall Roth hired Lawson to be his research assistant; he eventually became an employee at the Hawaii Innocence Project, a program of the William S. Richardson School of Law. He also began co-teaching Roth's professional responsibility course, and as a result, he was invited by School of Law Dean Avi Soifer to teach on his own as an adjunct professor.[6]

Lawson states that he quickly had "one of the heaviest teaching loads at the law school", and in 2019, he described himself as "a tenure-track faculty member".[6] By 2012, he had become the co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project.[8]

Lawson frequently provides legal analysis to the local media in Hawaii.[8] In January 2015, Hawaii State Senators Mike Gabbard and Brickwood Galuteria introduced legislation that would have created "character and fitness" requirements for faculty at the Richardson School of Law, including a prohibition on the employment of people who had previously been suspended or disbarred from practicing law.[8] Lawson told Honolulu Civil Beat that the law, which may have caused him to lose his job, was intended to target him as a result of his public commentary on high-profile cases. In March 2019, Hawaii criminal defense attorney Rustam Barbee (who was then representing Louis Kealoha, a former Honolulu Police Chief on trial for federal conspiracy and public corruption) sent a letter to Avi Soifer requesting that Lawson be prevented from commenting to the media on the Kealoha trial as well as the related trial of his wife Katherine Kealoha and the trials of other Honolulu police officers. The letter, which was six pages long, said that Lawson should be fired if he did not stop discussing the cases with the media. Lawson described the letter as a bullying tactic intended to silence him.[8]

In June 2020, Lawson attended and spoke at a Black Lives Matter protest in Honolulu.[9] A 2021 article in The Guardian described him as "a civil rights academic".[10] He teaches courses at the William S. Richardson School of Law on subjects including criminal procedure, criminal law, and professional responsibility.[4]