Making A Murderer 2 lawyer Kathleen Zellner has filed a lawsuit against her former client, Lathierial Boyd. As the Inquisitr reported, Boyd sued Zellner for $20 million, claiming the wrongful convictions specialist botched his civil case after he spent over 20 years behind bars for a fatal shooting outside a Chicago nightclub. Now Newsweek has gotten a hold of Zellner’s countersuit, which claims Boyd’s refusal to settle for any less than $20 million pushed the case to trial where his past as a drug dealer was “fatal to his integrity.”
Zellner’s lawsuit also claims Boyd owes her law firm over $867,000 in legal fees and $85,000 for a loan paid on Boyd’s behalf. In a statement given to the Cook County Record about Boyd’s lawsuit against her, Zellner explained her former client’s position.
“Mr. Boyd has a history of filing meritless claims against his former attorneys,” she said.
Lathierial Boyd remains on the list of clients she has helped that is featured on Zellner’s webpage. A Chicago Tribune article on his release from prison noted his sister and a Cook County sheriff’s deputy confirmed he was 20 miles away from the nightclub at the time of the murder watching a basketball game. A Guardian feature goes deeper into Boyd’s assertion that racist police officers railroaded him into a guilty conviction. It also touches on his civil rights case.
“The wrongful conviction civil rights cases are emerging as the most effective way to curb police abuse tactics,” Zellner told the Guardian in 2015. “When it becomes cost-prohibitive to employ officers who frame innocent people, police departments will get rid of these officers or never hire them in the first place.”
While Kathleen Zellner has been freeing wrongfully convicted clients for over 20 years, she became much more prominent once taking on the post-conviction case of Making A Murder subject Steven Avery. Avery was convicted of murdering photographer Teresa Halbach in 2006, but the 2015 Netflix documentary series raised serious questions about the evidence used to find him guilty. Zellner took up Avery’s case after the first season of the show, and was featured extensively in the second season as she collected new forensic evidence into a 1,200 page motion for a new trial.
While Avery’s appeal slowly moves through a series of motions from Zellner and denials from Wisconsin courts, Zellner has kept believers in Steven Avery’s innocence hopeful for a sudden break in the case. In December, Inquisitr reported on her request to allow new DNA testing on unidentified bones found in a Manitowoc gravel pit. While the appeals court denied that motion, Inquisitr notes Zellner plans to file another motion based on more new evidence.
On January 7, she tweeted , “Something big is coming in the next 7 days.”