This Week in Law Professor Justice

Three stories today about teachers in the legal profession getting into disciplinary matters.

First up, we have Quinnipiac assistant dean Mary Ellen Durso, who was "sentenced to three years of probation and six months of home confinement for her role in a scheme to defraud a mortgage lender and for filing false tax returns." The damage? $126,000. That's right, kids, if you're black and you deal a few thousand in drugs, you're going to prison. If you're an executive or administrator and you defraud people for ten times as much, you get home confinement. Brilliant.

Second, we have Widener professor Lawrence Connell, who I wrote about last month when he got in trouble for apparently doing what professors every do when he used the dean's name in some absurd hypos. Thankfully, it appears the faculty committee has some sense as they've recommended against firing him.

In an interesting twist, it seems Prof. Connell is actively investigating and plans to go after the students who denounced him:

"We're trying to figure out who those two students are right now. We've got it narrowed down to three," [Connell's attorney] said. "We can sue the students for defamation in state court immediately. We're not going to sit back and be a punching bag on this."

My desire for morbid entertainment has me hoping this will continue. Third-tier professor v. a few third-tier students who were probably annoyed they got B-'s on the curve. Has promise.

Third, we have George Washington adjunct lecturer Richard Lieberman, who was arrested by U.S. Customs authorities on six counts of child exploitation:

According to the charges, between Aug. 11 and Aug. 25, 2010, Mr. Lieberman used the Internet to sexually entice those he believed were two different girls under the age of 16 years. In fact, the charges said, he was engaging in online conversations with two undercover agents in Florida posing as 10 and 13-year-old girls.

Mr. Lieberman is accused of sending the “13-year-old girl” an image of a naked man, engaging in a sexually explicit conversation with the “10-year-old girl” and sending her website links to images of male and female genitalia.

GWU has already deleted his faculty profile (innocent until proven guilty, eh?), but if you go soon enough, you can see it on google cache.

Richard D. Lieberman is a principal in the Washington, D.C. firm of McCarthy, Sweeney & Harkaway, P.C., and has been a government contracts attorney since 1988, concentrating on counseling government contracts clients, claims, bid protests, criminal investigations, audits, contract compliance programs, Federal Supply (multiple award) Schedule contracts and debarment proceedings. He is a former deputy inspector general and assistant inspector general of the Department of Defense, where he was involved in the planning and execution of internal auditing, contract auditing, investigations and inspections. He also served as a professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee and a budget analyst in the Office of the Department of Defense Comptroller.

Emphasis added. Again, innocent until proven guilty, but I'm not exactly sure what you can argue if the feds have transcripts of you sending 10-year olds to dirty websites.

Here's to hoping that if his guilt is proven, he gets something worse than three years of probation.