Law Schools, Lawyer of the Day, Violence

Law Student of the Day: Did Pissed-Off Iowan Pee on Girlfriend's Belongings?

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How would you like to be sitting in property class at Iowa College of Law, and realizing that you are in the same section as this guy? The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports:

An Iowa City man is accused of physically and verbally abusing his live-in girlfriend on Sunday.
According to Iowa City police, Alvin K. Seals, 35, choked the woman after an argument and caused her to hit a wall with her elbow. The woman scraped her elbow and also cut her finger during the struggle, police said.

A tipster reports:

Seals is a 1L at Iowa College of Law. Word on the street is he dropped one of the three doctrinal first-semester classes (property) already.

Alvin Kwesi Seals apparently has quite the temper. More urine soaked allegations, after the jump.


The allegations against Seals don’t stop with a domestic dispute that went a little too far:

Police said Seals also urinated on the woman’s belongings, threw a lamp against the wall and threatened to “jab her in the face” with the broken lamp. Police said Seals told his girlfriend that he “wished she was dead.”

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It’s been a while since I took real property. Does peeing on something constitute open and notorious behavior such that the adverse possession clock starts to run?
Of course, no domestic violence complaint is complete without an alleged murder threat:

Police said Seals continued to verbally abuse the woman and told her he would only refer to her by derogatory names. The victim told police the argument and assault continued throughout the day and at one point, Seals told his girlfriend he would kill her in her sleep, police said.

Sources — sources in Seals’s section, mind you — claim that a search of Iowa Courts Online reveals a list of prior violations:

Today was a slow day in Property (actually, every day in Property is a slow day), so I looked him up on the Iowa judiciary web site. Here’s what I found for his priors:
* 1 arrest for sexual abuse in the third degree in 2003. Went to trial, not guilty verdict.
* 1 OWI conviction in 2007
* 2 public intox convictions
* 7 speeding tickets
* 1 ticket for suspended license.
* 1 ticket for expired registration
* 1 ticket for operating without license
* 1 ticket for failure to display registration
* 1 ticket for tinted windows/windshield
* 1 ticket for lack of vehicle insurance
P.S.: Submitted this anonymously because it seems like a bad idea to piss off someone charged with sexual abuse/domestic abuse at various points. Especially if he ends up coming back to our section.

Yeah, he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy I’d want to piss off either.
But what is really shocking here is that Iowa recruited this guy to come to law school. Check this 2006 article, in which Iowa Law touts Seals as part of its undergraduate outreach program:

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Before this summer, Kwesi Seals and Tiffany Silvera were both sort of considering going to law school someday and studying for careers in law. …
“I’ve been able to keep up with the work, and it’s made me realize this is something I can do,” said Seals, an Iowa City native who will be a senior at UI. Silvera and Seals are two of the 22 undergraduate students who are spending the month of June at the UI law school for the fifth annual Hubbard Program. The program is an introduction to law school targeting current undergraduate students from groups historically underrepresented in the law and encourages them to consider careers in the field….
“There is a lot of reading,” said Seals, a theater arts major at UI. “At the end of class, just as you get up to leave and you’re planning your evening, they hand you 80 pages of reading and tell you to read it tonight because these are the cases we’ll be studying tomorrow.”

I guess the Iowa statutes governing housebreaking were not part of the reading?
Police: Man assaulted woman, urinated on her belongings [Iowa City Press-Citizen]
Hubbard Program Introduces Undergrads To Law School [University of Iowa News Service]

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