Well, having posted one brief ethics note not typically worthy of a full post, here are some more that just popped up…
1. On season two of “Broadchurch,” a quirky Netflix British drama that ran three seasons, there is an exchange in which a criminal defense attorney (that is, a barrister) in an intense and controversial trial excoriates her assistant by saying, “If you were doing your job, we’d have a chance at getting our client off!”
That is unethical and a false characterization of the defense’s job. It is also, I fear, what most people think the defense is trying to do.
A defense attorney’s job in a criminal trial is to ensure that the prosecution proves the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in the assessment of the jury. It is not to get a guilty criminal “off.” It’s a subtle distinction but a crucial one. Every defendant deserves a fair trial, which means a competent, vigorous defense, so that if he or she is ultimately found guilty, due process has been served.
The defense attorney’s mission is to make the prosecution fulfill its mission. When the prosecution’s argument fails because the defense demonstrated that the case wasn’t clearly presented or strong enough, that is entirely the prosecution’s fault. If, despite a vigorous and zealous defense a defendant is convicted by a competent jury, the ethical defense attorney should feel satisfied. An attorney who is elated that she got a guilty defendant “off” is in the wrong profession. She did her job, but the prosecution didn’t, and the result, while the right one, is nothing to celebrate.
2. Sen. John Fetterman had a fall due to a fainting incident and was hospitalized today. This week Fetterman told an interviewer that Bluesky, where all the sensitive, Christlike progressives hang out who are so concerned about the deportation of “good” law-breaking immigrants, is the cruelest social media platform. Today he had his opinion confirmed first hand, as Bluesky users fell all over themselves wishing him ill and celebrating the mishap. How did the Left turn so violent and ugly? When did this happen?
3. Today I got a phone call with the caller ID reading “Booz Allen Hamilton.” The firm has been a consulting client of mine in the past, so I picked up: it was a call center for a health insurance provider. I am getting other calls with fake IDs. No one should trust, or listen for a second to any appeal from a company that uses fraud in its sales technique.
4. I’m preparing a rebuttal to an esteemed commenter who feels the diagnosis “Trump Deranged” is just an ad hominem insult whereas I am certain that, properly applied, it is a necessary and just diagnosis. Jonathan Turley writes about a classic example. Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin has declared that her office will no longer invest in U.S. Treasury bonds to protest what she called the “authoritarian regime” of President Donald Trump. Turley, describing the move as “bonkers,” writes in part that “the person in charge of investing that money is declaring that politics rather than economics will guide investments.”
Turley continues, “It is the ultimate virtue signaling at the cost of others. She is given a fiduciary duty to properly maintain and protect the investments of the city, which is currently facing a rising debt crisis. She is saying that the city will not invest in what Alderman Bill Conway (34th), a former investment banker, correctly described as ‘by far the most liquid and secure debt instrument in the history of the world.’”
Trump Derangement.
Ethics Alarms 
“How did the Left turn so violent and ugly?”
The modern wing of the left (which dominates the Democrat party) that is the direct descendent of intentional communist subversion of the 50s and 60s has always been violent and ugly.
I seem to recall there were thousands of terrorist bombings by left-wing groups during the 1970s. Sometimes there would be several within the same week. They have been violent and sociopathic for at least that long, society just seems to have forgotten about it. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that so many of our information-sharing institutions, from schools to media to academia, have been wholly captured by the left.
Correct. They just bided their time until they had produced the right conditions and the right mentality among young people and radicalized white women to make violence acceptable.
These are the same people who, barely 3 years ago, called Republican concerns about Fetterman’s health ableism. BlueSky sounds like the modern version of the Two Minutes Hate from “1984”
1. I forget if I read this somewhere, but I’ve been working with this summary of the legal system for a while now:
The purpose of the prosecution is to protect society from lawbreakers. The purpose of the defense is to protect society from the prosecution.
Never heard that before, but its not far off. Ethical prosecution, however,means never bringing a case unless you are certain that the defendant 1) is guilty and 2) can be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Society should never be in danger from a prosecutor. The prosecution should be the conscience of the justice system.
That is the ideal that we should expect the prosecution to aspire to. If we could trust the prosecution to reliably do that, though, why would we need the defense as a separate role?
It’s not just an ideal: it’s the ethical standard prosecutors are bound to conform to, but often don’t, and are seldom punished by bars when they don’t
Yeah, I heartily agree that the prosecution should be legally punished if they prosecute someone in bad faith (such as concealing evidence that might help the defense).
If we could count on people conforming to ethical standards, though, we wouldn’t need Internal Affairs, or disciplinary hearings, or juries for that matter.
Independent measures to hold people accountable for conforming to the ethical standards swear to protect is baked into just about every part of the Constitution.
It sounds like the problem you see isn’t that we have a system that protects people from authoritarianism, but that people bump into those protective boundaries all the time and don’t seem to suffer as much punishment or reputational damage as we’d expect them to. Does that sound right?
For prosecutors definitely. It’s like the jury’s hesitancy to find cops guilty of excessive violence, but not as justifiable. Prosecutors have a lot more power than cops, and their abuse of it does massive damage that is only rarely addressed, so there are few consequences, and definitely not enough to serve as a deterrent.
that is pretty good.
the problem is that sometimes it is not the prosecution that is the problem. It is the police.
I had to defend someone accused of possession of drugs. His story was not believable; some unknown third party dropped the drugs by his feet while the police were there. He was convicted in about 20 minutes (after the jury got their free lunch).
the problem? The police stopped him for a turn signal violation and then expanded their investigation unlawfully. I moved to suppress the drugs and that motion was denied.
his conviction was overturned on appeal. So, yes, my job was to get a guilty person off.
the prosecution did nothing wrong proceeding with the case (the suppression argument was a close call and opposition to it was not bad faith); the fault was with the police.
-Jut
Good point; is there a phrase that encompasses the police and the prosecution? Is the prosecution considered a part of “law enforcement”? “The Justice Department/justice system?”
3) Most of the spam calls I get show phone numbers from my own area code. Almost any time I engage with them, one of my first questions is “Where are you located?”. When they say Florida or Washington or some such, I will then ask “So why does my caller id identify you as calling from North Carolina? If you’re lying about your phone number, why should I talk to you?
At some point they will realize they’re not making a sale of whatever it is they are peddling. At that point they hang up. Never, ever have I had one of them be polite enough to even say “Goodbye”. Just rude as well as swindlers.
Unfortunately these days so many of these are robo calls — it takes a lot of effort to get to a real person for me to abuse.. Hardly worth it.
Here’s a tip for dealing with robo-calls: Don’t say the word “Hello” when you answer the phone.
By “robo-calls” I mean calls from one of the systems that makes multiple calls by a machine, then if someone actually answers the phone, the system THEN connects a person to that call.
I’ve figured out through a little trial-and-error that there’s voice recognition in use to listen to what you say when you pick up, so that the system can distinguish between a live person and a voicemail greeting.
Whenever I answer with something like “Good Afternoon, this is Dwayne….” I get dead air on the call almost every time. I can even pause a moment and add “Is anyone there?” and still get no response.
It works pretty splendidly to filter out real calls from robo-calls so that I don’t have to listen to whatever bullshit they’re peddling.
–Dwayne
P.S. Of course, the better still way is to simply let any number I don’t recognize go to voicemail. The robo-call machine NEVER leave a message because there’s no real person connected to the line yet.
I took to the habit of answering “Ben Chode” to incoming spam calls, mostly of Pakistani origin. Many times it’s not just ‘hello’, but simply a human voice that causes transfer to a human.
I had to stop that habit because once a conference of other co-workers called me troubleshooting an issue that needed my expertise… And one knew the meaning of the phrase.
Falsifying the phone number is easy and illegal, but very difficult to enforce. There are mechanisms to trace them to the true offending carrier, but the organization that does so only takes requests from government law enforcement. In my state, the authorities were not even interested when a local district court’s number appeared on my caller ID.
4. Chicago has money to invest?
RE: #4 There is an article by a psychotherapist in todays Wall Street Journal Is ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Real? – WSJ.
The article states that he would never label someone with TDS but the behavioral patterns mimic other anxiety related disorders. His conclusion is that Trump is not the cause but merely a trigger for existing mental health issues that center on lack of personal control over their lives.
I have said I would stop using the term TDS because I have come to believe that it does not aid in meaningful engagement. That said, I can use the knowledge of the clinical issues to structure my arguments better without alienating my opponent.
That seems like a sound approach to me. With emotional issues, sometimes it’s more effective to address them indirection (the empathy mindset approach) than to directly label and criticize them (the semantics mindset approach).
EC Perhaps you are rubbing off on me.