If I Kill the Dean of Widener with Malice Aforethought... is that Manslaughter or First Degree Murder!?

Ha.  That's exactly the type of example that Widener Law professor, Lawrence Connell, used during his Criminal Law lectures.  And for that, he is suspended indefinitely and may be fired. Allegedly, there are other issues with the professor as well:

In a letter to Connell, school administrators said the professor has a pattern of racist and sexists comments in the classroom, as well as hypothetical situations that threaten fellow professors and students. If true, the allegations made against Connell by several students may violate the school's discrimination and harassment code, it said. 

Wow.  These Widener students are super sensitive.  I might as well let it be known that I'm not a fan of Widener.  In 2000, Widener was my Cooley.  For those of you that don't read my blog often enough, I make fun of Cooley bi-weekly because it's the shittiest law school in the country.  That privilege was once reserved for Widener.  I thought regionally at the time.  I used to tutor students for the LSATs in the Philadelphia area and Widener was everyone's back-up school--before Drexel opened.  Their part-time program was infamous.  The bar passage rate was low.  And this Delaware School feeds into Pennsylvania because Delaware is too damn small to absorb them.  The Pennsylvania market is highly saturated and notoriously low paying for a big city.  I am no longer familiar with Widener, but I am sure it still sucks.  Chime in if you feel differently.  Big tangent, sorry.  Back to the story.

He is being accused of being a racist sexist pig:

According to correspondence released by Neuberger, Connell was informed on Dec. 10 that some students in his spring 2010 criminal law class had complained to administrators about offensive statements concerning women and minorities — including the murder of Ammons, a black woman. Vice Dean Patrick Kelly told Connell that he then interviewed students in his fall course. Those students "raised similar concerns without the violent scenarios of last spring." 

Ha. If the Dean is black and a woman, does that make her any less appropriate as the "victim" in a criminal law hypothetical?  Isn't she asking for it as the Dean of a shit law school?

"As a teacher, I have employed hypothetical problems involving familiar people in absurd situations, to enable students to remember the legal principles involved," Connell wrote. "It sickens me to think that after my nearly 26 years at Widener, university administrators are suddenly able to divine from the baseless claims of a couple disgruntled students that I am a bigoted racist with violent propensities."  

I don't know Prof. Connell from Adam, but I'm willing to bet that he isn't guilty as "charged."  It's pretty normal to discuss murder when you're teaching about murder.  Oh yeah, those classes often discuss rape and manslaughter as well.  I don't know how you can teach criminal law without discussing... crime.  You can only slice and dice and run over Britney Spears so many times before it gets old.  Power to Prof. Connell for evoking images that felt more real to these downtrodden students.  Leave it to a "Law" School to quash a person's freedom of speech.