Face Off: Prof Sues for being Pictured as Murder Suspect

By Tanya Roth, Esq. | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Stephen L. Morgan, 38, is a Cornell proffessor with degrees from Harvard and Oxford. He runs the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality.

Stephen P. Morgan is described by his own father as a "journal scribbling loner." He reportedly has a propensity for making anti-Semitic comments and is former classmate of recent murder victim Johanna Justin-Jinich.

Can you tell which one is the real murder suspect? Wesleyan University initially could not.

Authorities reacted swiftly to the horrible murder of student Johanna Justin-Jinich, shot in a bookstore near the Wesleyan campus on May 6. Unfortunately, during the manhunt for Justin-Jinich's killer, the University quickly placed Stephen L's picture in wide circulation to media, students, employees and the campus security mailing list. Notified of their mistake, it still took nearly three hours for the University to remove the picture from it's website. The week the Associated Press reported this story (posted December 3rd), the picture of the wronged professor still appeared on some web stories about the murder.

What is really bothering the prof, though, is the University's lack of remorse for their blunder. It seems they have even refused his requests that they publicly state he was never even a suspect in the case. "All they've said is they regret this happened to me, which sounded to me like something written by a lawyer," the professor told the AP.

So Professor Morgan had his own lawyer do a little writing which included a lawsuit claiming "humiliation, mental anguish and emotional distress ... and injury to his career." It seeks unspecified monetary damages for what it calls Wesleyan's recklessness and negligence.

And what happened to the actual murder suspect? The police found his car near the scene of the killing with a box of ammunition, a handgun holster and a journal filled with hateful comments about Justin-Jinich, Jews and other students at Wesleyan. Stephen P. Morgan turned himself in 35 hours after the shooting.

He is being held without bail and will be due in court on December 15th.

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