Dieter Tejada ’13 (CLAS) was finishing his senior year at Norwalk High School, his acceptance to UConn in hand, when he found himself being arrested and charged with a felony.
The charge tied back to an altercation after a high school party when, outsized and unarmed, he’d defended himself against an attacker with a baseball bat.
“I was 17 years old and arrested,” Tejada says. “I had already been accepted to UConn. Is UConn going to pull the plug on me? One thing I am grateful for is UConn didn’t pull that acceptance.”
It was clear that Tejada had acted in self-defense, and he and his family tried to make that case, but, Tejada says, despite his innocence, he decided to submit a guilty plea and take a jail sentence, rather than face the prospect of a maximum 10-year prison sentence if found guilty at a trial.
On June 4, 2009, he pled guilty to felony assault in Fairfield County Superior Court and began his prison sentence. He was still enrolled at UConn and had to take a leave for the fall 2009 semester.
“I just wasn’t up for the task at that time — not mentally or emotionally,” Tejada says. “My mom was the main person in my corner. Most people don’t understand the law. Everybody thinks they know the law until they get arrested. They think they know how it’s gonna go. It’s not ‘Law and Order.’ I wasn’t even inside all that long, out on parole after five months, but I was different when I came out. I was shut off from emotions.”
Tejada’s career path started at UConn and went through law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is now the co-director and co-founder of National Justice Impact Bar Association and Justice Impact Alliance, organizations aimed at assisting people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system.
