Law School & The Murder Conviction

Normally, one might assume that mentioning a second-degree murder conviction on a student’s law school application might lessen one’s chances of getting accepted. Nevertheless, convicted murderer Bruce Reilly recently received an all-expenses paid scholarship to attend Tulane Law School. Nineteen years ago, at age 20, “Reilly beat and stabbed to death a 58-year old English professor at Community College of Rhode island, capping off his crime by stealing the professor’s car, wallet, and credit cards,” reported Hans Bader in the Washington Examiner.

While being a felon may well preclude him from being admitted to the bar after graduation, the most glaring aspect of Reilly’s current status is that “he is attending Tulane on an NAACP scholarship and a Dean’s Merit Scholarship. . . .Now, we know that the NAACP (and apparently the dean of Tulane) thinks it is appropriate to give a scholarship to a convicted killer.”
Released after serving 12 years of a 20-year sentence, Reilly became affiliated with a radical community organizing group called DARE where he helped engineer a “successful Rhode Island ballot initiative that restored voting rights for parolees and those on probation.” The DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) website affirms the group’s support for Occupy Oakland and stands against racism, sexism, capitalism and imperialism.

In this politically correct environment, it appears that “every criminal must have the chance to go to college at taxpayer expense, the more morally-depraved the better — at least according to the progressive mind, which seems to view criminals as victims of society.”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

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