February 26, 2010

Mitchell faculty in the news, through Feb. 26

Following is a summary of Mitchell faculty and programs recently featured in the media.

The work of students in William Mitchell’s Immigration Clinic, led by Adjunct Professor Paula Duthoy ’90, was featured in the news story “One Man’s fight for Citizenship” on Minnesota Public Radio Feb. 25. The students and Duthoy spent the past year helping prove that Juan Alameda, who was born in Mexico but lived in the United States since 1991, was eligible for U.S. citizenship.

• MPR news story.

President and Dean Eric Janus was interviewed by Star Tribune columnist Jon Tevlin in his Feb. 18 column on “No budging on budget for locking up sex offenders.” Janus commented on Gov. Pawlenty’s proposed $89 million expansion of the facility for sex offenders at Moose Lake. “This is a tried-and-true political position,” Janus said. “It’s giving in to a broken and misguided system. Nobody likes sex offenders, including myself. The prevention of sex offenders is a clear good. But what we need to do is figure out how best to use our resources to do that. I don’t think we’ve looked at enough of the knowledge that is already out there. Our entire focus is on repeat offenders, but that is a small part of the problem.” Janus thinks more should be spent on prevention, police work to close cases, research as well as less costly supervision.

• Star Tribune article.

Dean Janus also was quoted in the Feb. 15 Connecticut Law Tribune in an article on “Sex Offender Confinement Poses Tough Questions.” Connecticut is one of many states across the country scrutinizing the issue of keeping dangerous sex offenders in any type of government control past their prison sentence completion. Janus said requiring sex offenders to live in a treatment facility as part of the terms of their parole would not be unreasonable, as long as the facility doesn’t have the same level of confinement as a prison. He compared it to having a convicted burglar stay at a halfway house for six months after his release from prison. “When you start getting into legal problems is when either the state is trying to impose these requirements when someone is no longer under [government] control or conditions of confinement aren’t consistent with normal probation or parole,” Janus said.

• Connecticut Law Tribune article.

Professor Ted Sampsell-Jones was interviewed by KARE 11 TV Feb. 11 in the unfolding case against former auto mogul Denny Hecker, now under federal indictment for fraud and conspiracy. “It’s basically alleging that he lied in order to get a big loan from Chrysler Financial…he told Chrysler Financial that…Hyundai will guarantee to buy these cars back from us if anything ever goes wrong, and it turns out that wasn’t true,” Sampsell-Jones said. While the case is more straightforward than the high-profile case against businessman Tom Petters, Sampsell-Jones commented that it’s nonetheless very serious, involving a lot of money and a long potential prison sentence.

• KARE 11 news story.

Sampsell-Jones was also quoted in a Star Tribune article on Feb. 6 about the legal fees in the Tom Petters case, saying that the $3.3 million tab is not out of the ballpark for a case involving a $3.65 billion fraud. “It’s a big case with a lot of documents and a lot of lawyers working on it,” Sampsell-Jones said. “Those expense numbers get big pretty fast.”

• Star Tribune article.

Professor Brad Colbert was quoted in an Associated Press article Feb.8, picked up by multiple media outlets and titled “New legal issue: Payment for child porn victims.” Federal judges nationwide are weighing the issue of criminal restitution in child pornography possession cases, following a ruling in Connecticut a year ago. Colbert said he agreed with defense lawyers who said restitution requests belong in civil court, saying, “You get convicted of a crime and you get sued by a victim, and there’s a civil lawsuit where you pursue damages.”

• Associated Press article.

Professor C. Peter Erlinder was a featured guest on the Our World In Depth local cable television show “International Tribunals, History Told by the Victors and the Geo-politics of Africa (Part 1 and 2),” airing on MTN Channel 17 and SPNN Channel 15 throughout late January and early February. Erlinder, lead counsel in the Military 1 Trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), outlined the history of international tribunals, analyzed the workings of the United Nations, and discussed the context of the 90 days that became known as the Rwandan Genocide and the geopolitics of Central Africa.

Professor Afsheen John Radsan was quoted in the Feb. 2 issue of Politico about CIA moonlighting. “I’m surprised, and I think it looks bad,” said law professor John Radsan, a former CIA employee who has written extensively about internal checks on the intelligence community. “Ideally, [agents] should be fully employed, their loyalty should be fully to the government, and they should be looking to make their careers there.”

• Politico article.

Professor Jay Erstling was quoted in a Feb. 2 article in the Star Tribune on Boston Scientific settling 17 lawsuits with Johnson & Johnson in the past year, including a $716 million payout last fall to settle other patent-infringement suits. “The amount is unusual, but what makes it really unusual, and perhaps groundbreaking, is that the two companies are engaged in a whole series of settlements, kind of like a package deal,” Erstling said. “It makes a tremendous amount of sense” because it lessens risk and reduces the cost of litigation.

• Star Tribune article.