It was when I first realized that an unacceptable proportion of news broadcasters were morons.
We were watching PBS for some reason, when the second plane hit the tower. And a reporter said, I swear, “I want to caution everyone not to jump to conclusions. At this point, there is no evidence that this is an attack.”
No, it could be just a coincidence that two passenger jets hit the same structure on the same day within minutes of each other. Sure. That makes perfect sense. Thanks, PBS, for your professional restraint and expert analysis.
Ugh. The Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck is a particularly ugly one getting uglier by the minute.
We began with a triple child murder and the abortion-addled women who think the murderer is a heroic figure for showing why it’s a good thing to kill babies before they are born (so you don’t have to kill them later). Then we had jury misconduct, as it was revealed drip-drip-drip style by a series of individual juror interviews in which we learned that a nurse on the jury introduced her own expert testimony into the evidence ( forbidden), and that a lone juror holding out for a guilty verdict was wrongly targeted by the jury foreman to get him off the jury so the murderous mother could be acquitted.
I believe that while not a technical ethics violation, the judge reading the Foreman’s note in open court rather than only to the lawyers was irresponsible and incompetent. No one outside of the lawyers and the jurors needed to know what the impasse was, and the judge adding that detail made the Lone Juror a likely target.
Next, the defense attorney publicly vilified the hold-out juror. Prof. Turley correctly condemned that act by Attorney Kevin Reddington, but failed to mention that it was an ethics violation: Rule 8.4, “Misconduct” forbids Massachusetts lawyers from engaging “in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.” Sending the message to future perspective jurors that they risk being publicly attacked and denigrated for doing their civic duty is potentially disastrous to the administration of justice. I’m a Massachusetts lawyer: I may file a complaint against Reddington. In fact, I will.
Yet another juror seemed to say that a majority of the women on the jury were determined to acquit Clancy from the beginning of deliberations, and perhaps from the outset of the trial. She also seemed to suggest that she had been pressured to change her vote and didn’t have the integrity to stand up for what she believed…unlike the Lone Juror.
After the defense counsel’s ethics breach, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz addressed the media and engaged in prosecutorial misconduct. He stated that the investigation did not establish postpartum depression as the cause of the killings, maintained that Clancy was in control of her actions and that first-degree murder charges remain justified. In response to suggestions that the state was being insensitive to postpartum mental health issues, Cruz said, “Insensitive is killing three children” and that the prosecution’s job is to give a voice to those “who can no longer speak for themselves.” He added that the evidence gathered in the investigation showed that Clancy made a “cruel and calculated” decision and was legally responsible for her actions during the homicides. Massachusetts Rule 3.8. “Special Duties of Prosecutors,” forbids prosecutors from “making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”
I may file a complaint against Cruz, too.
[Oh: when I tried to find Mass. Rules of Professional Conduct 3.8 online, I got a message that said I was not authorized to view the page! Well, I guess that’s one way to avoid having your unethical prosecutors exposed…]
But wait! There’s more…
Reddington asked for the President to pardon Clancy. The President can’t pardon a defendant in a state prosecution, and as a lawyer, Reddington must know that. His plea was misleading grandstanding, and dishonest, designed to mislead the public.
I’ll add that to my ethics complaint.
And this, from Oprah…
Black woman argues that black women who murder their kids deserve support too, not just white women. The entire room of women cheers deliriously. This is mass psychosis. pic.twitter.com/xSZLJFqwRC
By all means, white women shouldn’t be the only ones privileged to kill their children…
We also learned that from juror Paula Devlin on ‘CBS Mornings’ today that the Lone Juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the sole black on the jury. Oprah’s gal-pal Gayle King, who has never displayed to me any particular talent or acumen justifying her position as a CBS morning hostess other than her relationship with O, was stunned:
King: A black man is the holdout juror?
Devlin: Yes.
King: Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.
Why does she have to sit with that for a second? Black men are not supposed to vote guilty in criminal trials? Black men are supposed to be sympathetic to child killers? Black men are supposed to bend to the will of white women?
I have been given the ridiculous assignment of trying to produce a useful legal ethics presentation to lawyers association in 75 minutes this morning. On top of that, I can hardly ignore the metaphorical elephant in the room, the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and yet the connection between that event and legal ethics is attenuated. The chief one is that lawyers who defended some of the alleged terrorists were and still are vilified in the conservative news media and by other ignorant critics.
Rule 1.2 (b):
(b) A lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social, or moral views or activities.
Anyway, I’m off to downtown D.C. in the rain. More posts when I get back, I promise…
Incredibly, the conservative website “Not the Bee” called that “an absolute masterclass in dealing with godless commies.” Where’s Extradimensional Cephalopod when we need him/it?
I know the EA herald of respectful disagreement would be all over this. On the other hand, Debra Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian, has maintained that engaging in debate with Holocaust deniers give them too much credibility, and I believe it is valid to hold that Communists warrant the same dismissive treatment. It is pretty funny that when asked to name an accomplishment of Communism, all the male Communist can come up with is “The Bolshevik Revolution.
However, shouting insults and talking over people is not an ethical debate practice no matter what the topic or who is involved.
My current state of legal residence has gone nuts.
On November’s Virginia ballot, Virginia’s voters will consider “Amendment 1,” which would:
Make abortion freely available throughout the third trimester of pregnancy, all the way up to birth;
Abolish the right of parents to be consulted on, and to consent to, abortions sought by their young daughters; and
Enable anyone to perform an abortion and to escape legal responsibility for botching an abortion.
Enable a child, without her parents’ knowledge or consent, to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sterilization surgery.
Like the earlier Democratic attempt to sneak a Constitutional amendment past voters with a dishonest description on the ballot, this one employs misleading and deceitful language (“reproductive health” standing in for “the ability to kill unborn babies in the ninth month of pregnancy”) and belies Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s promise that she would govern as a “moderate Democrat.”
But wait…there’s more!
The Arlington County Board just voted to put aside $50,000 for families whose head of the household is an illegal immigrant and has been detained or deported by ICE. Moreover, the county won’t require families to prove detention or deportation or provide employment records. Each eligible family can get up to $2,000. The money will be distributed by Arlington Thrive, a non-profit organization that provides emergency financial assistance.
“This investment in our families is about the urgency we have seen in our community in the last month,” said Arlington County Board Chairman Matt de Ferranti. “And we are going to respond with care. and we are going to respond proudly. That’s what this $50,000 is toward with Thrive.”
Former Acting ICE Director and former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey said the county may be violating federal law, arguing, “Arlington County is putting aside money for presumably people that are not even legal in the country, as opposed to giving it to Arlington County residents or American citizens.” “But I think the one thing that’s really interesting about what they’re doing here, there’s this alien harboring statute, a federal statute that makes it illegal to do something that induces or encourages someone to come to the country illegally or to reside in the country illegally, and I think Arlington County has a real problem with that statute.”
“They’re going to induce more illegal aliens into Arlington County, which will also cost the taxpayers even more money,” added Fahey. “There’s probably so many things that could be done that are better for the taxpayers and the residents and the legal residents of Arlington County.”
I could write full posts about many of these, and if I had time, I would. The networks and the Axis want to ignore it and are trying to bury it in negatives, but the event is obviously news, and attention should be paid….
Observations:
1. Competence! If this was the President’s idea, it was a great one. The GOP has to get voters to the polls (or to mailboxes, if he can’t stem mail-in balloting). If the event picks up just one or two percentage points in Republican voter participation, it will have been a success. If Republicans hold Congress, I guarantee both parties will make this tactic a tradition.
Incidentally, adding a mid-term convention is another so-called “democratic norm” that Trump is violating. The Horror.
2. Fetterman! One of the two biggest stories to come out of last night’s opening of the convention was Senator John Fetterman’s surprise video appearance, shot in front of a steel mill. Fetterman praised and endorsed his fellow Pennsylvania Senator David McCormick, a Republican, and said that they would work together “and work with President Trump and defend the steel way of life.” This makes Fetterman the Ethics Hero of the convention thus far. It also tells Democrats that if they are going to try convict Trump after a House impeachment and try to pack the Supreme Court, they will need to flip an extra Senate seat to their side.
This juror is telling you from the prosecution’s opening statement that she was team free Lindsay regardless of any evidence they would produce. pic.twitter.com/HsTxl54EXA
As EA noted from the beginning of the Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck, the trial presents an excellent argument for why women should be subject to peremptory challenges in voir dire when their biases are likely to result in jurors like this woman.
The prosecution isn’t supposed to show “compassion” for accused murderers. Nor are prosecution opening statements supposed to be warm and fuzzy toward a defendant. The state’s concern is with the victims, as well as the fabric of society wounded by terrible crimes.
Moreover, no “character witnesses” need testify that a woman who murders her own children is a “bad mother.” In a sane world, a woman who strangles her own children is by definition a bad mother. Presuming that a mother must be insane to do this is a pre-existing bias that should have disqualified this juror and any juror.
New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.
Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.
The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E.
The actual prevalence could be far higher. The roughly 25 percent rate does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Some of those, maybe many of them, likely had C.T.E. too.
C.T.E. is a progressive neurological disease caused by repeated impacts to the head. It can be definitively diagnosed only by examining the brain after death.
Studies have shown that the rate of C.T.E. in people who have not sustained repeated impacts to the head is nearly zero.
If the new study’s statistics were applied to today’s players — 1,696 on the league’s 32 regular-season rosters, not including more than 500 members of practice squads and those ineligible due to injury — at least 400 of them would be diagnosed with C.T.E.
Experts say that the rate of brain disease represents an occupational safety hazard with little comparison in the American workplace.
I have written this before, and had this story on the EA runway for a long time because it makes me angry. People who cheer on football are literally encouraging young men to cripple themselves for their entertainment. It is unethical, and indefensible.
“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”
—Kellie Farina, one of the three jurors interviewed following the mistrial called in the Lindsay Clancy murder case, after the jury deadlocked 11-1 with a single hold-out male juror refusing to vote for acquittal.
That may end up being an iconic unethical quote, one that echoes through the years as America comes to realize how shattered the values of American women have become in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The especially nice touch is the use of “viciously,” don’t you think? ‘Imagine, this idiot was somehow stuck on the fact that a mother murdered her three small children viciously! What’s the matter with him?’
I’d like to know what’s the matter with anyone who can “get over” the fact that three children were murdered by their own mother “viciously.”
WSYX is the Columbus, Ohio ABC affiliate, and the reaction to that head-exploding tweet was so negative that the station took down the tweet as well as the article it was linked to. That doesn’t change the fact that to even suggest that U.S.schools shouldn’t teach the single most important event in the 21st Century and one of the most transformative events not only in U.S. history but modern world history is signature significance. To even ask the question demonstrates fealty to propaganda over truth, and a conviction that generations must be taught by withholding any information that might provoke non-conforming thoughts and belief.
The U.S. has a major broadcasting network—several, if we’re being honest— that employs people who want to manipulate the public, lying about the past through omission. Every now and then the aspiring totalitarians of the Left slip up and tell us who they really are. This is one of those times.
Yes, the 9-11 attacks should be taught in schools so Americans learn that Islam is not “a religion of peace,” and that unrestricted, unvetted immigration from Muslim nations poses an existential threat to our values, culture and democracy. It also should be taught in the schools because it is history, and those who want to obscure history never have good intentions.
[As an aside, my harsh response may have run off commenter kawaii65c843be72after he compared the Left’s tearing down statues of Confederate generals with the fact that there are no statues of Hitler’s henchmen in Germany. I certainly hope so.]
Ethics Alarms 