Seton Hall Law School

NJ public colleges' loss of $55M in funding will hurt opportunity and ...

So now the middle class have some sort of entitlement that they can go to college? What a crock.

First off there are many paths to obtaining a college degree. Going to a high priced 4 year institution is just one. Community colleges offer a more affordable opportunity.

Second, college isn't for everyone. Way too many now go and get useless degrees.

Lastly colleges need to spend their money on better improvements and not overpriced administrators and overpriced sports programs. For example the current pres of Rutgers able to take a year sabbatical and then come back to a 350k a year job teaching HISTORY! A total embarrassment.

Today's high school graduates should be pointed to the trades. It's better jobs, more of them and a higher wage that getting a college degree in the litany of useless fields.

Personally, I don't think it's the obligation of taxpayers to provide a college education except their own children.

Colleges have everyone conviced if they get funding more will be able to attend. Maybe they need to look at the salaries of their deans and professors first. No wonder most liberal ideas come from colleges - they are the first ones with their hands out and convince their students that's the way to go.

Kids used to work and go to school part time to get their education. Guess they are more concerned about going to school to party. If you want an education bad enough you will find a way. And don't blame the government if you don't get one.

I agree there are people going to college who shouldn't be going. That being said, every academically capable student should have access to a four year institution. 2 year isn't a bad start for certain program, but unless you're trade oriented you can't just stop there. All students should have access to a state school. We keep talking about Europe and keeping up with students in other countries. Well....they give all their capable students a free college education. They treat college like we treat our K-12. Don't expect to keep up with these countries if you're not going to provide that opportunity. I think every academically capable student should have a free education at an in-state university...u know..just like those countries we compete with.

This. College degrees are becoming more and more expensive, and at the same time less and less valuable. Almost everyone I know who completed college is working in some form of retail service position, even people with multiple BS (as in bachellor of science not bull%$#, although maybe the latter is more appropriate). I decided to stop going to college after 1 year and I am able to work in a highly skilled technical field (software development) making on average 3-4x with no degree than most young people I know who recently completed their degrees. Virtually everything I know in my field is from learning on my own or work experience.

Braun: Seton Hall Law School sponsors project that aims to ...

The criminal justice system makes mistakes. The worst sort of mistakes. Sends people to prison, or even to their deaths, for crimes they did not commit.

This afternoon, three wrongfully convicted men, all New Jersey residents — Byron Halsey , Luis Kevin Rojas, and David Shephard — will help mark the launch of a unique legal project dedicated to ensuring that innocent people from this state don’t go to jail. It’s called the "Last Resort Exoneration Project."

Sponsored by Seton Hall Law School, the project goes beyond proving innocence through DNA testing, a method made famous by The Innocence Project, the New York-based organization founded by New York lawyer Barry Scheck — who also will be at the launch.

"What we are trying to do is often more difficult," says Lesley Risinger, the Seton Hall project’s director. "We will be trying to prove the innocence of convicted defendants in cases where DNA is not at issue."

Risinger, a graduate of the law school, already has taken on a number of cases — including that of Rojas, a young man from Union City wrongfully convicted of murder in New York City in 1990. She and her mother, lawyer Priscilla Read Chenoweth, worked on Rojas’s case for a decade and finally won him a new trial that resulted in an acquittal after he served nearly eight years in prison. Later, a civil court found Rojas was, in fact, innocent.

"This is not simply a question of proving whether someone did not get a fair trial," says D. Michael Risinger, a Seton Hall law professor and Risinger’s husband. An expert on evidence, he will work on the project with her. "That happens more frequently. This is a question of proving innocence."

Courts in some countries make finer distinctions about guilt than do American courts. The Scottish courts allow three verdicts — guilty, not guilty, or not proven. The "not proven" verdict suggests that, while the defendant might have committed the crime, the prosecution failed to prove its case. Here, not guilty might mean innocence, or it might mean an unproven case.

"We will be looking only for those cases where we are convinced a defendant is factually innocent," says Lesley Risinger. "The person was not involved in the crime."

That’s not so simple. She says gang members have been known to take the rap for more senior gangsters.

"They’ll tell us someone else in the gang committed the murder, but won’t identify that person," says Lesley, who worked on a similar project in New York. "We won’t take that case.

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