My last Death Penalty class consisted of a group debate.
The professors assigned one of three Supreme Court cert petitions to each student and we wrote response briefs.
Today we defended our briefs in group debates. I spent the majority of our debate challenging Nancy Grace: “The defendant recruited four guys to invade Joana’s home, pistol whipped her husband, threw Joana in the car, and stole her bayyybay!”
Here are tidbits from the other discussions:
Professor G: “So in your paper you decided to overrule Strickland.”
Jill: “I sure did.”
Professor G: “So what was the thinking behind that?”
Jill: “…uh. I don’t know.”
(Class laughs)
Jill: “But there WAS thinking!”
Jill: “AEDPA is horrible. This paper was the most complicated thing I’ve ever written. I crossed eyes and passed out a few times.”
Jack: “It’s only complicated if you’re trying to get around it!”
Jack: “AEDPA has an exhaustion requirement but the state waived it! I really wanted to quote Spiderman here because with great responsibility comes great power, and they were just LAZY and waived their exhaustion defense! It’s not my fault the state is a Dufus!”
Stay professional, University of Minnesota law school….
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Best Week Ever 13: Snow, infatuation
April 5, 2015 at 8:09 pm[…] full week of law school. There were the usual classes, gym time, tax clinic meetings, dog walks, a throw down in Death Penalty seminar, work, and a lot of dates with the new guy, […]