UT-Austin Prof Was Kept On Despite Felony Strangulation Charge

AUSTIN, TX — A University of Texas at Austin professor who previously pleaded guilty to strangling his girlfriend has remained on his job despite the school's zero-tolerance policy against domestic violence, according to a published report.

Richard A. Morrisett, a professor of pharmacy at the school, pleaded to the strangling felony charge and was also accused of a second incident that led to his girlfriend's hospitalization and violating a court order to stay away from her, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Upon learning of the past charges, university officials placed Morrisett on paid administrative leave for 18 days in August 2016 while a review was conducted. In an email to the newspaper, spokesman J.B. Bird explained why the professor was kept on: “The review found no relation between how the professor acted in this situation and how he acted on campus, and as a result he was allowed to continue his teaching and lab activities."

A tenured professor, Morrisett, 57, had faced three third-degree felony charges, each of which carried a prison term of up to 10 years. But after he pleaded guilty in February to the first incident, an agreement was reached with the Travis County district attorney’s office resolving all of the cases without requiring jail time, the newspaper reported. Instead, he was sentenced to four years of community supervision, ordered to take a family violence avoidance class, directed to undergo counseling, and required to complete 100 hours of community service while having no contact with the victim.

UT-Austin has a policy condemning domestic violence as prohibited conduct that it "will not tolerate," the newspaper noted in its report. Nevertheless, the Statesman found Morrisett was not sanctioned by the university even as administrators found he had violated a policy requiring employees to notify a supervisor of criminal charges. Instead, it was campus police who alerted administrators to the charges, the newspaper found.

According to a bio on the UT-Austin website, Morrisett works at the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addicition Research as a Revco Foundation Fellow in Pharmacy. His research interests include amino acid-derived neurotransmitter systems; synaptic transmission, expression of alcohol-related disorders.

>>> Read the full story at Austin American-Statesman

Photo of Richard A. Morrisett via University of Texas at Austin