She hasn't lost her passion - even though Cathy "Cat" Kelly has retired from the Missouri Public Defender system after 31 years.
"I am not "retiring' retiring," she explained in an interview Friday. "I am retiring from the public defender system and I am retiring from the practice of law.
"I am going into business with a friend of mine, in a new venture," which will be a "holistic bookstore called "Heart, Body and Soul,' which we hope to open in the fall" in Columbia.
She'll keep her law license active, but doesn't expect to use it.
"If I were going to continue to practice law, I would (continue to) be a public defender," Kelly said. "There's no other area of law that I would want to practice.
"I have loved being a public defender - it's a cause I believe in."
The U.S. Constitution's 6th Amendment requires, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial ... and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that means people charged with crimes have the right to legal counsel even if they can't afford a lawyer. Missouri launched its public defender system in 1972.
Kelly, 57, joined the system in 1984.
She said the public's biggest misconception of public defenders is their clients' guilt.
"We are not always defending people who are guilty!" she exclaimed. "We (work) to make sure innocent people don't get locked up - and it happens over and over and over."
She noted there have been more than 100 exonerations nationally for people convicted of murder and sentenced to death - only to have new evidence point to someone else as the guilty party.
"If you look at Ferguson or you look at what's happening all around the country, in terms of the criminal justice system, it's not really designed to protect innocent people," Kelly added. "We can say it is - but it is designed to push people through as quickly as possible. ...
"So, protecting innocent people from the government locking them away - is kind of a big deal."
Public defenders - and the criminal defense lawyers in private practice - also work to "keep the government honest," Kelly noted. "We are the ones who are watching to make sure that the police are, in fact, doing what they're supposed to be doing."
She said the public defender system is much better than when she started in it 31 years ago - and she's helped improve things in her four years as the system's head.
"This is a hard job - it really is a very challenging job," Kelly explained. "There have been attempts to dismantle the system and go back to a way of providing indigent defense that has been proven, both in Missouri and in other states all around the country, to be disastrous."
However, with 31 years of work behind her, Kelly determined she had "taken it as far as I can take it. And there's so much more that needs to be done - there needs to be fresh energy (and) fresh ideas."
She feels Michael Barrett, 40, who was sworn-in Thursday as the next state public defender, is the right candidate to move the system further forward.
Kelly said one of his challenges will be getting people to change minds on the "lock "em up" mindset Missouri has had for years.
"We have increased our spending in the Department of Corrections by over $100 million in the last 10 years," she said. "We are going bankrupt under our current system."
Missourians need to look at the experiences of other states, where "they are reducing costs and reducing crime rates and getting people back to work," she said.
She said her biggest regret is the public defender system remains understaffed and underfunded - a problem that could be resolved either by hiring more people or by reducing the number of crimes where prison or a jail sentence is a possible punishment, requiring the system to be used for any defendant who can't afford his own lawyer.
Kelly grew up in Mount Vernon, in Southwest Missouri's Lawrence County.
She first considered a legal career when she was a high school junior "and my astute father made the comment, "Well, you ought to be a lawyer because you argue all the time - so you might as well get paid for it,'" she recalled.
She majored in political science at what now is Missouri State University, Springfield, then went to law school at Washington University, St. Louis.
From there, she went to work in the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office for approximately six months.
"It didn't take me long to determine that my heart was really on the other side of that table, in the courtroom," she said. "I really am an idealist and believe strongly in the concept of justice and fighting for justice - and making a difference in the world."
Over the years, Kelly said, prosecutors have seemed more interested in pushing cases through the system and winning convictions, while defense lawyers spend more time working with their clients, learning who they (and their families) are and what, if anything, needs to change so they don't keep being charged with crimes.
After working in the public defender system for about five years, she quit after losing a case where her client was given the death penalty.
Fighting back tears as she recalled that case, Kelly said, "I just was, "I can't do this. It hurts too much.'
"So, I quit and moved to Colorado and went to work for a commercial law firm, where the only thing that was going to be on the table was money and I wasn't responsible for anybody's life anymore.
"And I made a lot more money, and I lived in a beautiful place in the mountains.
"And I hated it."
Six months later, in 1987, she was hired back by the public defender's office in St. Louis.
In 1995, she became the system's training director and, in 2006 - when State Public Defender J. Marty Robinson was deployed to Iraq with the Missouri National Guard - she was named deputy director and acting director while he was overseas.
When he retired from the post in 2011, she became the director.
"It's not hard to get up in the morning for this job," Kelly said. "This has been the greatest job, ever - not as director, but as public defender.
"We have passionate people, who are working against really tough odds and not always understood or respected for what they do - and, certainly, not paid well for what they do.
"And yet, they are some of the best people in the world. And I've been incredibly blessed (to) spend 30 years doing something I adored."