LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – After Joseph Lawson was found guilty last week in the murder case of Crystal Rogers, one of his attorneys, Robert Boyd, glanced at Lawson and quietly apologized for the jury's verdict.
"His first response was, 'brother, you can't control what those 12 people just did," Boyd told WDRB News in an interview on Thursday. "It was a very human reaction. It made it a little tougher honestly."
In his first interview since the trial, Boyd said he was "shocked' and "dumbfounded" by the verdict, in which Lawson was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence.
"I have been doing this a little over ten years, and I've never awaited a verdict with more optimism coming back as not guilty," he said during a 30-minute interview with co-counsel Kevin Coleman. "It was very difficult."
But the verdict didn't appear to be a tough one for the Warren County jury who deliberated less than five hours before convicting Lawson and Brooks Houck, who was dating Rogers and the last person to see her alive in 2015.
The jury of six men and six women found Houck, 43, guilty of murder (principal or accomplice to the crime) and complicity tampering with physical evidence.
The jury recommended maximum sentences for both men: life in prison plus five years for Houck and 25 years for Lawson. Both would have to serve 85% of their sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
A final sentencing hearing will be held Aug. 21 in Nelson County.
Coleman said they talked to Joseph Lawson earlier this week and he is "in as good of spirits as he can be given the situation. He's certainly not happy with the result but he is dealing with it appropriately."Â
Earlier this week, Boyd and Coleman asked Judge Charles Simms III to throw out the verdict or grant a new trial, claiming there were multiple errors made and very little evidence presented against Lawson.
"People have really kind of created monsters and created stories that are entertaining … but at the end of the day when you look at the evidence, those things aren't there," Coleman told WDRB. "The mystery is still not solved."Â
Specifically, the attorneys say Lawson was prejudiced in the eyes of the jury for having to stand trial with Houck, who has been the main suspect since Rogers disappeared on July 3, 2015.
"It was three days into the trial before (Joseph Lawson's) name was essentially really mentioned," Boyd said in the interview Thursday. "We sat there for two-and-a-half weeks where 98 percent of the evidence came in against Mr. Houck. That inevitably effected the jury in how they perceived him."
The trial included recorded statements Houck made to investigators but, given Houck didn't testify during the trial, provided Lawson no way to defend himself against these recordings, Coleman and Boyd wrote in the appeal.
In addition, Joseph's father, Steve Lawson, was given his own trial in May in Warren County and was convicted of the same charges as his son and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
The defense also argued Judge Simms erred in not striking jurors who had knowledge of Steve Lawson's trial.
"Honestly, I don't think it was possible for Joey Lawson to get a fair trial in Warren County by himself or with Brooks Houck after the Steve Lawson trial," Boyd said. "I don't think that anybody, including the court, realized the media spectacle that was going to be associated with the Steve Lawson trial."
Rogers, a 35-year-old mother of five from Nelson County, was last seen alive during the Fourth of July weekend in 2015 with her boyfriend, Houck. Days later, her car was found abandoned — still running — on the side of the Bluegrass Parkway. Her purse and other belongings were inside. Despite years of searching, she's never been found.
Prosecutors did not have a body, murder weapon, crime scene or any direct witnesses.
"I've never seen a case of this magnitude with so little physical evidence," Boyd said.
The trials were moved from Nelson County to Warren County because of the massive amount of media publicity the Rogers case has received in the last decade.
But after Steve Lawson's trial in Bowling Green, prospective Warren County jurors, who may not have known much about the Rogers case, were tainted by the conviction of Lawson, the defense claims.
And Joseph Lawson was unable to include the inconsistencies Steve Lawson provided to investigators – so many that prosecutors withdrew a promise of immunity if he was honest with investigators.
"At different times in the trial, it felt like more like Steve Lawson was on trial than Joey Lawson," Boyd said in the interview.
During his trial, Steve Lawson acknowledged he was guilty of tampering with physical evidence for helping his son move Rogers' vehicle after she disappeared. Joseph Lawson drove Rogers' car, and his father picked him up when the vehicle had a flat tire, leaving it on the side of Bluegrass Parkway, he testified.
Courtroom sketch of Joseph Lawson during opening statements for the Crystal Rogers murder case against him and co-defendant Brooks Houck in Bowling Green, Kentucky. June 25, 2025. (Courtesy of Sydney Young)
Before they left, Steve Lawson said he reached into Rogers' car and moved the driver's seat forward — because Rogers was short — and removed a miniature Louisville Slugger bat his son carried around regularly. At his son's urging, he called Brooks Houck at about midnight and told him the job was done, Steve Lawson said. He previously denied to investigators he had any involvement in moving the vehicle.
Since he was tried separately, Steve Lawson's testimony was not allowed to be shown to jurors in this trial.
The evidence against Joseph Lawson was much more scant, mostly consisting of a few people claiming they overheard Joseph and/or Steve Lawson talking about Rogers' murder.
Joseph Lawson's fingerprints were not found on the steering wheel of Rogers' vehicle. No DNA of either of the Lawson's was found in the car. A fingerprint found on Rogers' phone did not belong to either man. A palm print found on the car also didn't match the Lawsons or Houck.
Boyd used his closing arguments during the trial to say only a handful of witnesses even mentioned Joseph Lawson and most of those weren't credible, as they were bullied, coerced and threatened by Kentucky State Police investigators. He called two of the witnesses who mentioned Joseph Lawson — Charlie Girdley and Heather Snellen — two of the most untrustworthy witnesses he's ever seen.
The appeal argues the judge erred in allowing Snellen's testimony that she overheard Steve and Joseph Lawson talking about moving a body with a skid steer at the Houck farm.
Investigators repeatedly searched the farm but never found evidence of a crime. Snellen admitted to being on drugs when she heard the conversation and was coerced by Kentucky State Police, the defense argues. Her story changed multiple times.
The appeal argues the most concrete evidence presented was phone records showing Joseph Lawson was nowhere near the area where Rogers' car was found on the Bluegrass Parkway, when he called his father that night.
During the trial, the defense argued Lawson could have been on Boston Road, which runs parallel to Bluegrass Parkway, rather than up on the freeway.
Detective Tim O'Daniel, a digital forensic expert with the Louisville Metro Police Department, testified during the first week of trial he was never given access to Joseph Lawson's phone like he was given for Brooks Houck and Steve Lawson. Butler said Joseph Lawson called his father three times between 11:06 p.m. July 3 and 12:03 a.m. July 4, and not one of those calls showed up in the cellphone tower data.
In their interview, Boyd and Coleman said Joseph Lawson wasn't a suspect until 2020 and his phone records had been purged by that time.
"That was problematic for Mr. Lawson," Boyd said. "He has to determine where he was that night five years ago (in 2015)."
Boyd said in Joseph Lawson's first interview with the FBI, he told them he believed he was on Boston Road that night. The defense chose not to put Lawson on the stand to testify given the lack of evidence presented against him.
"It really becomes clear that it just could not have happened," Boyd told WDRB. "And it didn't."
In the motion filed in Nelson Circuit Court, the defense argues that Joseph Lawson should have been given a directed verdict (or acquittal) by the judge after the prosecution finished its case.
The attorneys noted Thursday there was no physical evidence against either of the men despite ten years of investigating.Â
"I truly believe that the Rogers' family deserves more answers to the questions that they have and with the amount of effort that the government has spent, and the inability to provide those answers, it's not fair to them," Boyd said the interview. "I just believe Joey Lawson is innocent in this case."
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