Education / Schools, Law School Deans, Law Schools

Cheating Scandal Embroils Law School In Federal Lawsuit

We can't say whether or not this student cheated. We can however, troll this law school for its pretty terrible grasp on how the justice system is supposed to work....

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One would imagine that a law school would be prepared to manage an unimpeachable quasi-judicial proceeding. If anything, a bunch of lawyers idealistic enough to turn their backs on private practice to preach from an ivory tower would bend over to expand the bounds of fairness in some kind of hippie Bill of Rights love-in. Law school court would be like Hair with more procedural safeguards and hopefully much less nudity.

That wasn’t the case last year, when a law school convened an Honor Board to prosecute a student for cheating on her exams. Now, that student is suing the school in federal court, alleging due process violations and breach of contract arising out of the investigation and prosecution of her case.

Is she guilty of an infraction or not? We can’t pass judgment on that from the pleadings alone. We can, however, troll this law school for its pretty terrible grasp on how the justice system is supposed to work….

An academic hearing isn’t a criminal trial. Still, even if a school isn’t bound by those rules, they’re a pretty good guide to keeping your proceedings beyond reproach. You wouldn’t want to get called out in a public filing. So just keep a copious record of the investigation, share everything with the other side, recognize some right to counsel, comply with any written standards you have, and execute some basic discretion before dragging the school into a potentially embarrassing quasi-trial. Nicole Suissa alleges that Penn State failed in all of this and, more or less, Penn State admits to those allegations.

Suissa is a rising 3L at Penn State Dickinson. Suissa is no stranger to the spotlight. While in college, CNN profiled Suissa in a piece about the rising price of education when the then 18-year-old struggled so much with the cost of school that she worried that her college career would be cut short after one year due to lack of funds. The story brought unexpected good news: a lawyer in South Carolina, J. Edward Bell III, saw the piece and offered to help her pay for her education. With Bell’s help, Suissa graduated from college and took her talents to Penn State for law school. And Penn State touted Suissa’s success story. At least at first.

Things turned south when a fellow student accused Suissa of cheating on an Evidence exam. According to the accusation, Suissa used her cell phone to look at websites about the Federal Rules of Evidence during the exam. Enter Carla Pratt, associate dean for academic affairs. With an accusation of cheating, Pratt dutifully began an investigation. She questioned Suissa and her phone was inspected. According to Suissa’s allegations, Pratt admitted that she failed to find any evidence on the phone suggesting that Suissa used it to look up answers during the exam, but Pratt nonetheless told Suissa to admit to cheating or face expulsion. Astoundingly, the Answer concedes this point. It’s one thing to keep digging, but another to beg for the confession immediately after admitting you’re at a loss for evidence. Bold. I suppose this is part of Penn State’s “practice-ready” approach for teaching lawyers how to deal with prosecutors.

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Suissa brought in her own counsel, even though she claims the school told her that legal counsel in this matter “wasn’t necessary.” At least this is a shady allegation that Penn State denies.

To hear Suissa’s story, after Suissa refused to confess, Pratt relentlessly interviewed all manner of witnesses — some of whom supposedly offered exculpatory evidence — and then either refused to turn over her notes, claiming that Suissa had no right to them, or claimed that no notes existed. Regardless of what Pratt said, if you’re conducting an investigation, keep a damn record and give it to the other side. It’s pretty straightforward. Again, this inquiry isn’t a real criminal prosecution, but Penn State — a law school, mind you — can learn a lot about maintaining the integrity of their procedures from the real-life courts. Brady is not the worst idea out there.

Pratt even questioned Suissa’s boyfriend and allegedly made him cry and threatened to expel him if he didn’t testify against Suissa. He testified about the Evidence exam issue and, according to Suissa’s account, on the stand he confessed that he felt coerced into his testimony. The Answer does not specifically refute this. See… this is what gets your investigation dragged into federal court. This affair prompted another university official, according to notes that Suissa saw, to question whether the investigation was pursued “too zealously.” Another allegation not specifically refuted in the Answer.

Over the course of the eventual Honor Board proceeding, Suissa pointed to security camera footage revealing that she’d already left the exam by the time Pratt alleges the cheating took place. The Answer contends that the security camera footage was wrong. Regardless of Pratt’s protests, the Honor Board dismissed the charges related to the Evidence exam.

So whether or not Suissa did anything wrong, this matter is closed, right?

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Wrong. Way back before the Honor Board hearing, after confronting Suissa over the Evidence exam and failing to convince Suissa to confess despite the lack of evidence, Pratt started looking into Suissa’s Mediation exam, which was submitted electronically prior to the established deadline. Suissa then submitted a second version after the deadline and claimed there was an error message in the uploading process. Does Penn State use ExamSoft? Both sides disagree over whether the tests were identical. Ultimately, the professor only graded the first-submitted exam. No harm, no foul, right?

Besides, Pratt allegedly pursued this sideshow only to demonstrate a “larger pattern of dishonesty” when viewed in conjunction with the Evidence exam allegations. So this wasn’t even deemed worthy of an independent charge out of the gate? If the Evidence exam charges were dropped, is there really enough to this Mediation exam to warrant action? Especially when the Mediation professor showed up to testify on Suissa’s behalf, explaining that her review of the facts revealed that Suissa did not violate any rules (and, by the way, the parties dispute whether or not the administration tried to convince the Mediation professor not to testify).

The Honor Board decided there was, dismissing the professor’s testimony about the rules of her own exam as “merely her opinion.” Oh.

Suissa wasn’t expelled, but received a suspension and lost her good character standing, resulting in her losing her clinic job.

Suissa’s Complaint includes a number of other issues ranging from the school only providing her a couple years worth of Honor Board precedent as a guide (the written policy of the school requires publishing ten years) to preventing Suissa and her lawyer from copying evidence and requiring it be reviewed on Penn State premises to the Honor Board asking Pratt to guide them on mid-proceeding rulings.

And now the case is in federal court. Suissa’s lawyer? Her old friend J. Edward Bell III, fighting to keep her in school a second time.

It’s impossible to tell from this record what happened in either the Evidence or Mediation exams at Penn State. But a law school simply can’t afford the public portrayal of running an overzealous, hide-the-ball, fly-by-night proceeding. While the school denies the core allegations of Suissa’s complaint, that the Answer concedes large swaths of the procedural complaints is embarrassing.

I mean, when has Penn State suffered such a high-profile black eye?

The Complaint and Answer are reproduced over the following pages if you want to read the whole sordid history….

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