When the Center for Justice closed its doors in 2020 after serving the Spokane community for over 20 years, Camerina Zorrozua and Virla Spencer vowed to keep some of the nonprofit law firm’s services alive.

“That’s where it started, with Center for Justice, when (Spencer) and I were working there,” Zorrozua says. “She was doing driver’s relicensing; I was doing postconviction. When they closed, she came to me and said, ‘We can’t let these programs die.’”

Zorrozua and Spencer wasted no time, and that same year founded The Way to Justice, a new nonprofit law firm, which now resides at 321 W. Boone, just east of the Spokane Arena.

The driver’s relicensing and postconviction relief programs were resurrected through The Way to Justice, and the two founders, both women of color, implemented their own values, added youth empowerment efforts, and increased the focus on racial justice.

The practice handles cases statewide and is funded through various grants, donations, and other sources.

The Way to Justice has eight employees, three of whom are attorneys, including Zorrozua. The firm has two interns currently, but up to six interns during the summer months when law students aren’t enrolled in classes.

Zorrozua, the legal director at The Way to Justice, oversees the postconviction relief program at the nonprofit.

Even after time has been served, fees have been paid, and requirements have been met, obstacles may remain for those entangled in Washington's legal system.

“When we screen someone, I pull up their entire Washington background, and I go through every line to see if it’s eligible for any relief at all,” says Zorrozua. “The goal is to get the client, at the end of all of our work, a clean record.”

Statutory vacating is part of the work Zorrozua handles through the postconviction relief program. People convicted of certain crimes in Washington can have their convictions vacated from their records—something that helps them as they apply for jobs or college, Zorrozua says.

“Once you have a conviction vacated, it’s not there anymore,” Zorrozua says. “It’s a lot easier not to have to explain what that conviction was.”

Zorrozua and her legal team also handle constitutionality vacating under the State v. Blake case.

In 2021, the Washington state Supreme Court found the main law criminalizing drug possession to be unconstitutional. The decision stemmed from a case in Spokane known as State v. Blake. As a result, any Blake-related convictions qualify to be vacated from a person’s criminal record, and any legal financial obligations paid as a result of those convictions qualify for financial reimbursement.

“We have a staff attorney that’s specifically dedicated to Blake work and all of the things that go around it,” Zorrozua says. “Some of our clients have received thousands of dollars in refunds from the state because of unconstitutional convictions that they’ve been living with.”

Another staff attorney is dedicated to what Zorrozua calls decarcerate work, which focuses on prosecutorial discretionary reviews, through which prosecutor’s offices are able to go back and review cases and sentencing.

This can be especially helpful for clients who have had multiple charges and sentences stacked on top of each other, which, in some cases, effectively makes it so they’re serving life sentences, Zorrozua says.

The myriad of other forms of relief include cases brought to state Clemency and Pardons Board, as well as through administrative expungement.

Spencer, among various other roles at The Way to Justice, directs the firm’s driver’s relicensing program, which works to restore clients’ driving privileges.

“That’s helping folks who have fines or violations to get back on a payment plan, and they don’t need to worry about getting pulled over again for a suspended license,” Zorrozua says. “They can live their lives and pay off those debts and move on.”

Under its current contract with the Washington state Office of Civil Legal Aid, with funding from Washington State Department of Commerce, The Way to Justice has vacated 355 convictions, not including the State v. Blake-related cases, since June 2023.

Zorrozua estimates that the Blake-related vacated convictions are around 500 in the past year.

In that same time span, the firm also sealed 59 juvenile cases, had 85 driver’s licenses reinstated, and wiped out over $600,000 in legal financial obligations.

“I think I have 300 people that are under my casework right now,” Zorrozua says.

That high caseload, which includes clients throughout Washington, illustrates how great the need is for postconviction relief services, she adds.

The Way to Justice has flat fees of $150 for driver’s relicensing and $250 for relief services, however, if someone would be presumed indigent by law, for example if they’re receiving food stamps or social security income, those fees can be waived.

“I'm not going to take your money if I'm arguing the court can't take your money," Zorrozua says.

Zorrozua says the justice system often creates additional barriers for people to overcome, rather than identifying and trying to fix problems or help people.

“A lot of people are just trying to cope with mental health issues or past trauma that they haven’t necessarily been able to heal from,” she says.

When those people then wind up in the system, more trauma is created, Zorrozua says.

“When you go to jail and you have kids at home, or you have a job, and then by virtue of being in jail and being unable to afford to bond yourself out, you might lose that job, or you might lose custody of your kids,” she explains.

After a person loses their job because they went to jail, it also becomes more difficult to find a new job, which in turn means they may lose their housing. They then have to deal with these new stressors all while trying to cope with the mental health issues or past trauma that they had before they were arrested, Zorrozua says.

“It feels like our system is reactionary in a way that is losing the opportunity to address the true problem,” she says.

The Way to Justice aims to help people during their most vulnerable moments and try to help them address the issues that contributed to them getting into legal trouble.

“When they come into this space, the goal is to be someone who will listen and actually hear that story that no one ever wanted to hear in the beginning, and to meet them right where they are with no expectations, no judgment, and then to be that voice that is really transparent and honest,” Zorrozua says. “That’s what I try to do.”

The practice also focuses on addressing systemic racism, something that Zorrozua says is embedded in the American justice system. 

She points to the decarceration work that her firm does for people who have numerous convictions and sentences stacked on top of each other and don’t qualify for review.

“I don’t want to overgeneralize, but when you start dissecting these cases, it looks as if the system is just trying to find a place to put them forever and then just don’t want to have to deal with it after that,” Zorrozua says.

She says that there is some great justice reform happening across the state, particularly with juvenile work and youth decarceration, but there are still “blaring cases that are being ignored.”

“More often than not, there are racial components to that analysis,” she says.

Prior to her work at the Center for Justice and The Way to Justice, Zorrozua spent 13 years working at Maxey Law Office PLLC, in Spokane.

“I loved being at Maxey Law Office, but that was a for-profit,” she says. “I could see that there were a lot of folks who couldn’t access our services, and they would have really benefited from it through the courts.”

That experience, plus the work she did and observed while serving on the board at the Center for Justice, helped her realize her passion for the work she now does at The Way to Justice.

“You feel like you have a responsibility that you have to keep doing this work,” she says.

The nonprofit also focuses heavily on engaging with the community, particularly through its youth empowerment efforts, which have included educational training about the George Floyd movement and policing in America, taking Black student unions from Rogers and Ferris high schools to Washington D.C., and fundraisers to provide kids with shoes and school supplies.

“From the beginning, we’ve always felt like it was so important to give back to the community,” Zorrozua says.

The firm also has provided free legal clinics throughout the state, and currently is focusing on screening people at clinics to see if they qualify to become clients, so they can seek relief or have their driver’s licenses reinstated.

“It makes a big impact on people’s lives,” Zorrozua says.