Thirty-three teams from across the country arrived in Brooklyn at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York on February 18, all prepared to present oral arguments in the National Appellate Advocacy Competition regional. Only four would advance to nationals. One of those four will be from Marquette Law.
As the winter break winds down, it’s definitely worth your time to start binge-watching Making a Murderer, a recent Netflix documentary on a real-life criminal case. A very close-to-home criminal case, at that.
The documentary, filmed over 10 years, follows Steven Avery, who was convicted in 1985 of sexual assault. He maintained his innocence and, indeed, 18 years later DNA evidence exonerated him. After he was released, he sued Manitowoc County for his wrongful conviction. It looks as though that lawsuit starts digging up some very unsavory conduct among officials in Manitowoc County.
But then—Avery is arrested for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. Several months later, his nephew Brendan Dassey is also arrested.
I’ll stop there with plot. If you’ve been around Wisconsin, you’ve probably heard of the case. If you’ve been on the Internet in the last couple of weeks, you’ve almost surely heard of it. But you must watch it.
For law students, there’s so many teachable moments. For everyone, there’s so much to talk about.
In May 2013, comedian Bill Cosby received an honorary doctorate of letters from Marquette University. In his address to the students, he told them “to go into the world remembering the values they learned from the school’s Jesuits—respect, integrity and a responsibility to serve others.” In retrospect, it’s ironic advice coming from him.
In the past year, a large number of women have come forward to say that Cosby sexually assaulted them, with incidents going back to the mid-1960s. To date, that number has swelled to more than 50. The stories of the alleged assaults have some general similarities: Cosby offered to mentor the women or coach them with acting; he offered them drinks; the women then felt dizzy or woozy and some may have passed out; some of them describe waking up in various states of undress.
Yesterday, Cosby was charged with aggravated indecent assault, a felony, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, stemming from an encounter in 2004 with Andrea Constand, then operations director for Temple University women’s basketball team, who believed Cosby was a mentor and a friend. The allegations in the complaint parallel the numerous other allegations. The complaint alleges Cosby gave Constand some pills and told her to sip some wine; Constand felt dizzy and felt she had no sense of time; Cosby then sexually assaulted her. The case was re-opened this summer, prosecutors said, after new evidence emerged. That new evidence was Cosby’s deposition testimony in the civil suit Constand filed against him. In his deposition, Cosby admitted giving women Quaaludes in an effort to have sex with them.