Last month, I wrote about three University of Wisconsin professors who also happen to be convicted felons. Roberto Coronado (a medical school professor who makes $137,641 per year), Steven Clark (a medical school professor who makes $67,761 per year), and Lewis Keith Cohen (a comparative literature professor who makes $72,856 per year) were all still drawing their salaries at that time. As state legislators and taxpayers roared, the University scrambled to decide whether it could--and should--fire them. Invoking fairness, due process, and the rights of the accused, university officials justified their slowness to act as necessary legal and procedural prudence.

Since then, Coronado and Clark have both been placed on unpaid leave, and Provost Peter Clark has recommended that they be fired. Meanwhile, it turns out, the university was employing Cohen, whose thirty-day sentence includes a work release component, sorting books in an unused reading room and slating him to review graduate student applications. In July, Cohen pled no contest to using the internet to send pornographic material to a young boy, and to conducting sexually explicit exchanges with him; the boy turned out to be a detective posing as a boy, and when Cohen arrived at the Subway restaurant where he had made arrangements to meet his virtual love interest, he was arrested. Cohen had used his university-issued office computer to pursue the boy/detective.

University officials say the decision to allow Cohen back on campus was a pragmatic one--""Our choices were to pay him for doing nothing or to try to get some productive work out of him," said Spear, adding that Cohen's job supposedly kept him out of contact with people and also kept him away from university computers.

But that sort of rationale doesn't look all that compelling when exposed to public view, and people are predictably scandalized. "It is absolutely appalling that the university and the Department of Corrections would allow him on campus, much less give him access to student records," Republican state representative Scott Suder declared. Suder is writing legislation that would charge universities with summarily firing employees who are convicted of certain felonies. Meanwhile, UW continues with its slow, meticulous, and costly adherance to current state law, which does not allow the university to fire employees who are convicted of crimes, but instead requires the university to conduct its own investigation to demonstrate that the criminal behavior is tied to their employment.

The university's investigation of Cohen's misconduct concluded this week. Yesterday, Spear relieved Cohen of his job, recommending that he be fired and further recommending that he be barred from campus. Cohen will continue to be paid while he appeals the recommendation, a process that could take as long as a semester.

Thanks to Maurice Black for the links.

"Cohen will continue to be paid while he appeals the recommendation, a process that could take as long as a semester."

Hopefully when (not if) he is fired, the university will then sue him for reimbursement of 1) his salary and 2) the cost of the investigative/adjudicatory process to remove him, both back-dated to at least the time of his criminal conviction, if not the time of his actual crimes. Hopefully state law allows for this. If it does and the university doesn't act upon it, then the state AG should step in and do so anyway.

My first reaction was amazement that Cohen would dare show his face on campus once news of what he had done got out. Surely anyone in that position would change his name and move to another state, leaving no forwarding address. But then I figured anyone who would commit the crime he committed is not very capable of shame in the first place.

With the universities being the great refuge of uber-liberalism, and the uber-liberals pushing hard to "normalize" homosexuality and sex for/with children - the guy may not think he did anything wrong.

Correct me if I'm picking this up wrongly, but it sounds as if Cohen did not send pornography to a fourteen-year-old boy; he sent pornography to an adult detective whom he thought was a fourteen-year-old boy. I'm not trying to excuse Cohen's actions, but in the absence of a previous record of aberrant behavior with adolescent boys, he seems to have committed a crime in which there is no actual victim.

BR, you would feel better if his crime had had an actual victim?

krm-aren't you exaggerating a tad, or is this the typical uber-conservative response to the liberal refusal to persecute homosexuals and pass laws that discriminate against homosexuals? homosexuality and pedophilia are two different things. the vast majority of homosexuals aren't child molesters--just as the vast majority of heterosexuals aren't child molesters, rapists, or wife-beaters, even though some heteros commit these crimes.

i guess it's easier to persecute a group of people by aligning them with pedophiles.

OT-all the dirtbags in this story should be fired. i have to agree with Laura (believe it or not)--even if he did send the material to a cop, he thought it was a kid, and that's what matters. this kind of sting seems like the best thing to catch this vile breed of criminal.

Laura, I think you're deliberately misconstruing my point. It's not that I'd "feel better" had there been a victim; I don't approve of Cohen's sexual predilections, and don't particularly enjoy the thought of a fourteen-year-old boy falling prey to a pedophiliac homosexual professor. But it still seems strange to convict someone of something he actually hasn't done. Cohen didn't molest an adolescent boy, nor did he send obscene materials to an adolescent boy. The "victim" here is entirely fictive. What Cohen was convicted of seems more a thought crime than a real crime.

BR, I understand what you're saying. It does seem strange. The crime itself was soliciting a minor for sex, and for all intents and purposes, he actually did that.

Suppose that I try to hire someone to kill my husband, and that person goes to the police. The police get him to wear a wire and he comes back to me and gets me to incriminate myself. I should be convicted, right? Even though my husband was never in danger.

In Cohen's case, were he to be convicted, the choice would be between convicting him because he tried to solicit a minor and the minor turned out to be the feds; or because he did solicit and have a harmful relationship with a minor and was caught (which doesn't always happen right away). In order to protect our children, we have to countenance this kind of entrapment. People who would not solicit a minor for sex are in no danger here.

is it entrapment? yes. is it a trap that anyone could fall victim to? no.

think of these operations as a pit in the road. these pits aren't on "Anystreet." They happen to be on "Pedophile Avenue." the only people that fall into that trap are those willing to walk down that street. not only are people like Cohen willing to walk down that street--just being willing shouldn't be the crime--they're actually walking down that street--which is the crime.

"...it sounds as if Cohen did not send pornography to a fourteen-year-old boy; he sent pornography to an adult detective whom he thought was a fourteen-year-old boy."

Someone appears to be in need of a quick primer on the law of criminal solicitation and attempt. Not being familiar with Wisconsin's criminal law in particular, at first glance this appears to me to actually be both: i.e., attempted solicitation of sex with minor, though the particular state law in question may consider that redundant, defining it as either one or the other.

"...he seems to have committed a crime in which there is no actual victim."

But he didn't know that. Criminal law is always about an act (actus reus) and always about a state of mind (mens rea, including the absence of a state of mind). His state of mind was the intent to solicit sex with a minor, and his criminal act was attempting to do so.

"Suppose that I try to hire someone to kill my husband, and that person goes to the police. The police get him to wear a wire and he comes back to me and gets me to incriminate myself. I should be convicted, right? Even though my husband was never in danger."

Yes, clearly. Likewise, to further illustrate by analogy, altering the hyypothetical, let's say the hitman doesn't go to the police. Instead, he shoots and kills someone he BELIEVES is the husband, but is actually someone else. What crimes have been committed, and by whom? First, conspiracy to commit murder of the husband, by both the wife and the hitman (solicitation having merged with the conspiracy once it resulted in an actual agreement to commit the solicited act). Second, attempted murder of the husband, again by both parties. And third, murder of the actual victim, again by both parties, because criminal co-conspirators are liable for each other's crimes committed in the furtherance of the conspiracy.

"is it entrapment? yes. is it a trap that anyone could fall victim to? no."

The law of entrapment varies from one jurisdiction to the next, but typically that actually means it's NOT entrapment.

I think that this is sick, that a university can employ someone with a Felony conviction like this, allow him axcess to student files, and also not fire him when he was using a computer on the campus to pursue his crime. This brings to the forfront issues that pertain to safety on that University's campus. I personally think that something like this would discourage me from applying and attending the U of W. Welcome to the world of PC though. You have to be Politically Correct, so you can not just fire someone, you have to make it a long drawn out process and put students at risk. Lets all wake up here and realize, at times it is OK to take drastic action even if you catch shit for it.