Why Washburn?

I'll be starting law school in the Fall.  Moving away from Wichita shortly before.  Taking my life back to college and away from the "real world" like a needle scratching vinyl.  I wouldn't call it a d0-over, as I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have been able to do this the first time around.  But now, I suppose, things are different.  I'm different.

I applied to 7 different law schools.  I've read where the current economic recession/depression hasn't noticeably increased the number of law school applicants for the current cycle, but rather the number of applications each applicant has sent out.  It would seem I'm of that statistic.

Of those 7 schools--Washburn, University of Kansas, University of Missouri Kansas City, Tulsa, University of Oklahoma, Southern Methodist, and William & Mary--I've been accepted to the first 4, waitlisted by the 5th, and am still waiting to hear from the sixth.  I applied to all but the 7th merely due to regional geography and realistic expectation of admittance; the 7th, William & Mary, had sent me an application fee waiver after I took my LSAT, but like the Anglo-monarchially-named Virginian teases they are, they were only setting me up for a bump-in-their-selectivity-ranking rejection.

My initial target school was KU, and, conveniently, they were my first admittance.  The others soon followed.  There was an interesting phone conversation with an OU admission officer who wanted to gauge my long-term residency aspirations for the state of Oklahoma.  I was honest, and then I was waitlisted.

Washburn and KU became my top two choices, especially once I received scholarships from both.  Washburn's offer exceeded that of KU's by about 6 times, however, covering nearly the full amount of my tuition.  Jackpot.

But it's not just about money.  Every time I've visited Washburn, I've felt like I've just belonged.  Conversations with professors, students, staff, etc. made me feel like they genuinely wanted me to study there.

In relation to other law schools, Washburn's "regional" status implies that I'll need to work in the Kansas area for around 5 years post-graduation, which is fine with me.  I'll also have lesser BIGLAW prospects than at, say, SMU, but BIGLAW = leasing my every breath, 80 hours a week, to the gears of a large legal machine that I've no interest in turning.  As the Doors say in 5to1 (and I promise this is the first and last time I'll quote Jim Morrisson), "Trade in your hours for a handful of dimes."  No thank you.

So Washburn it is.  I start on August 17th, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't really looking forward to it with a kind of nervous anticipation I haven't felt in a while.  It might be a temporary step back, but it's good to know that's the right direction.

Jury Duty

I was selected for Jury Duty this last week.

I've never done it before, but it's always been something I've wanted to do.  As a soon-to-be law student, the timing couldn't have been more perfect.

It was a quick one-day trial for what was essentially a domestic battery case.

Pieced together from testimony, it sounded like the defendant got into an argument with his girlfriend which escalated into a physical altercation. She fell down, he jumped on top of her and hit her, then tried to strangle her with a box fan power cord. After a undetermined time passed (she said 5 minutes.... which we knew was impossible because, if strangled that long, she would be dead), he got off of her and it resumed as a yelling match.

In walks her 18 year old son who immediately instructs the defendant to leave. He does, but only after throwing a chair at the mother.  The son walks into the bedroom and talks to the mom. Mom doesn't want to call the police, son does. After 5 or so minutes, defendant walks back into the house (he has keys) and gets into an altercation with the son.

Defendant picks up a steak knife from either the dining room table or the kitchen counter (son's in-court testimony said table, officer report from immediately after the incident had the son saying kitchen counter) and tells the son, "If you come near me, I'm going to kill you and send you and your mother to hell where her other son is."

Son immediately lunges at the defendant. Defendant never drops the knife but son holds defendant's arm in a way where the son cannot be stabbed. Son pushes defendant out the door, at which time he punches a window pane, breaking it.

Police are finally called at this point, and arrive on the scene a few minutes later. They find the defendant walking on the street a few houses down the block. They find the steak knife on the ground near him.

Evidence consists of photo of the woman's neck with two linear rope-burn-type marks, photo of the broken chair, photo of the box fan, photo of the broken window pane, photo of the knife as found at the scene, the knife itself (detective was unable to find fingerprints on it), and a photo of the defendants left hand which had some scrapes and small lacerations on it.

Also, testimony by the mother, the son, three officers who arrived on scene and took statements, the detective who tried to get fingerprints off the knife, and the defendant.

Defendant's testimony says that he was attacked by the woman, he tried to defend himself, then the son jumped in and started beating him too. He finally gets away, and possibly (it sort of sounded like he made it up right there on the stand) broke the chair as he was running out of the apartment. When he was asked at what point the knife entered the equation, he said he never saw a knife during the incident, but later surmises that maybe the knife was what caused the lacerations on his hand.

Two charges were filed against the defendant:
Battery against the mother.
Assault with a deadly weapon against the son.

Here's how we judged the case:

I was jury foreman.

The defendant's testimony was obviously flaky, as witnessed by the knife discrepancy (if I got stabbed in the hand with a knife, you're damn sure I would know a knife was involved in the altercation) so we pretty much just threw it out altogether as unreliable. However, he could of gotten up there and talked about balloons as the burden was on the prosecution to prove their case.

Well, we all thought the second charge of aggravated assault with a knife was plausible, but there was really no prove that the defendant threatened the son. Even the son's testimony quoted the defendant as saying "If you come at me, I'm going to blah blah", so it didn't ever feel like it fit the definition of assault.

So I took a vote and it was a unanimous "not guilty" on the assault charge.

The battery charge was different. Something obviously happened, and it wasn't what the defendant said, so it took a bit more discussion. At first vote, there were 3 guilty and 9 not-guilty. 

We eventually surmised that the defendant did, in fact, wrap the cord around the mother's neck. But was it self defense from an attack from the mother? A quick read through of the requirements for a self defense case said the stipulations were not present, so even if the girlfriend/mother started the physical part of the altercation, there was no way to prove it.

So, then, it came down to this: the intent was obviously there, the facts were there, and the mother's testimony (albeit a little shaky itself) was there, so I and the two other "guilty" votes eventually convinced the rest of the jurors that he was guilty of the battery charge.

All in all, a great experience. I loved it.