Character

The Most Unethical Sentencing Fallacy Of All: Lavinia Woodward Gets “The King’s Pass”

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Oxford University student Lavinia Woodward, 24,  punched and stabbed her boyfriend in a drunken rage, then hurled a jam jar, a glass and a laptop at him. This, in the U.S., would be called a criminal assault, and maybe even attempted murder.  Ah, but British Judge Ian Pringle knows better. He agrees these acts would normally mean a prison term, but Lavinia is a star student, and wants to be a surgeon. He hinted that he would spare her prison time so that her “extraordinary” talent would not be wasted. As poor Lavinia’s barrister, James Sturman, argued, his client’s dreams of becoming a surgeon would be “almost impossible” if she had to serve time.

Well, we certainly mustn’t jeopardize a violent felon’s dreams.

This kind of reasoning is infused with The King’s Pass, also known as The Star Syndrome, the rationalization making the perverse unethical argument that the more talented, prominent, useful and important to society a miscreant is, the less he or she should be accountable for misconduct that nets lesser lights serious and devastating consequences:

11. The King’s Pass, The Star Syndrome, or “What Will We Do Without Him?”

One will often hear unethical behavior excused because the person involved is so important, so accomplished, and has done such great things for so many people that we should look the other way, just this once. This is a terribly dangerous mindset, because celebrities and powerful public figures come to depend on it. Their achievements, in their own minds and those of their supporters and fans, have earned them a more lenient ethical standard. This pass for bad behavior is as insidious as it is pervasive, and should be recognized and rejected whenever it raises its slimy head.  In fact, the more respectable and accomplished an individual is, the more damage he or she can do through unethical conduct, because such individuals engender great trust. Thus the corrupting influence on the individual of The King’s Pass leads to the corruption of others.

Judge Pringle is taking the King’s Pass/Star Syndrome to a new low: he’s arguing that Lavinia should receive special treatment based on how valuable to society she might be, given enough immunity from the consequences of her own conduct.  Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Lindsey Bittorf

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I regard people who contribute kidneys to near strangers as residing in a special category of Ethics Hero, in the exemplary ethics category….maybe the exemplary exemplary ethics category.  Considering Don Bedwell, the first individual I learned about who  engaged in this extraordinary act of sacrifice, kindness, and compassion,  I began my 2005 post, “There are special and rare people whose ethical instincts are so pure and keen that they can make the rest of us feel inadequate.”  Bedwell, a traveling businessman, donated his kidney to a waitress who often served him at his favorite Cleveland restaurant when he was passing through the city on business. The second altruistic organ donor was East Haven, Connecticut  Mayor April Capone Almon, who gifted one of her kidneys  to a desperate constituent she barely knew.

Wisconsin police officer Lindsey Bittorf is the most recent example of this special breed of ethics hero.  She saw a Facebook post from a local mother pleading for someone to rescue might  her  8-year-old son, Jackson Arneson, who needed a kidney. The boy’s family and friends had been tested and none were a match. Bittorf didn’t know the child or the family, but got herself tested on a whim. Doctors told her she was an unusually good match,considering that she was not related to the boy.

Last week, Bittorf  rang the doorbell at Jackson’s home to surprise his family with the good news,  ABC News reported. Jackson could have one of her healthy kidneys.The police officer told Jackson’s mom, Kristi Goll, that it was an “early Mother’s Day gift.”  That’s a bit better than flowers, you’ll have to admit. Continue reading →

The Legal Profession Appears To Have A Serious Character Standards Problem…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I refer you, for context, to the recent post about Shon Hopwood, Georgetown Law Center’s former bank-robber, former federal prisoner professor, who was welcomed into membership in the D.C. bar…like me.

Now comes word that Tarra Simmons, a third-year law student, convicted felon and former drug addict, who in December won a Skadden Fellowship to help people recently released from prison, was told by the Washington State Bar Association that she did not possess the character to make her a trustworthy lawyer.

Tarra was a magna cum laude law school graduate, and co-chairs Washington’s Statewide Re-Entry Council.  She recently received a gubernatorial appointment to the state’s Public Defense Advisory Committee, and was selected by the dean of Seattle University School of Law to receive the school’s dean’s medal this year.

Nevertheless, the character and fitness board’s vote against Simmons was not even close, at 6-3.

A registered nurse for 11 years, Simmons became addicted to prescription drugs and methamphetamine after her father died, as she self-medicated for depression. In 2011, she was charged with felony theft, drug possession and gun possession, pleaded guilty, served 20 months in state prison. She says she  wants to assist former justice-involved individuals, as  a lawyer who has lived their experience, so they “can overcome barriers and rejoin society.”

But Tarra cannot cannot take the Washington Bar examination without getting a positive  character and fitness recommendation, and that looks unlikely. She’s appealing to the Washington Supreme Court, but traditionally that forum is tougher in assessing the  character and fitness of  potential admittees.

I think her course now is obvious: move to the District of Columbia. The bar there will surely see no reason to doubt her character.

After all, it’s not like she robbed a bank.

__________________________

Pointer: ABA Journal

Unethical Conduct Anti-Matter: Here Is The Perfect Way To Get The Guy Who Was Thrilled By Helping A Girl Kill Herself Out Of Your Mind…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

That’s Neil on the left, Jonny on the right.

Read this.

There is hope.

The post about the opposite response to a potential suicide is here,

Ethics Alarm Check: What Do You Do If You Get A Text Like This One From A Close Friend?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Hypothetical:

A friend asks via text:

“What you do if you knew a friend was trying to commit suicide?”

You text back,

“Talk them out of it”

Then he texts you…

“The thing is i wanna help kill them. it be awesome. seriously im going to help her. Its like getting away with murder! Im so fucked up. I’m seriously not joking. Its going down in about a week or two.”

This was the actual scenario preceding the suicide of a 16 year old girl (above. left) in Utah.

Hunters found the girl’s body hanging from a tree.  A can of industrial strength air duster and a cellphone were nearby, and the latter  contained a video of the girl’s death.

It showed the girl with a noose around her neck, standing on  on a rock. She inhaled the contents of the air duster can, lost consciousness, and fell off the rock, causing the noose to tighten and slowly strangle her. The video captures the ten minutes  it took the girl to die.

Tyerell Przybycien, 18, arrived at the scene to claim credit for the video, telling officers that he knew the girl and was with her when she died. He told detectives that he had a fascination with death and wanted to see what it was like to watch somebody perish.

Yes, it was Przybycien who wrote the text message to a friend.

There are other disturbing aspects to the story, but my professional interest is in the conduct of Przybycien’s friend. Let us eschew, for now, the question of why anyone would have a friend like this sicko in the first place.

We know the friend has at least rudimentary ethics alarms, since his first response, “Talk her out of it,” was the right one. After that, however, his ethics alarms died. Przybycien told him that he was planning on helping a girl kill herself because it would be a turn-on, and the friend did nothing to stop him…or at least did nothing that did stop him.

We can speculate endlessly about what would work and what would not, but this tragic scenario lands squarely in the realm of the Ethics Alarms principle, “If you are in a position to stop unethical conduct, stop it.” Here a life was involved, activating the coda, “Whatever it takes.”

What might some measures be that could fulfill this ethical imperative?

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Bank Robber Professor

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

A few weeks ago the Washington Post published the unusual story of  Shon Hopwood, a member of the D.C. Bar and  a tenure-track faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center. He spent 11 years in federal prison for robbing banks n Nebraska—that’s banks, plural—became a jailhouse “lawyer,” got  a scholarship to law school, was somehow approved as meeting the character provisions required for bar membership, and now amuses his Georgetown law students with tales about how when he played basketball in federal prison, he had to carry a shank in case his team started to lose.

You should read his story, which I’m sure will enrich Hopwood in  a movie deal, if it hasn’t already, but you shouldn’t have to read it before you answer today’s Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz:

Should a convicted bank robber be teaching law students?

Continue reading →

We Now Have Definitive Proof That Hillary Clinton Was Engaged In Blatant, Illegal Influence Peddling

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has confirmed that Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State,  made a personal call in March 2011 to  pressure—my sourcesays says “demand”—that Bangladesh’s prime minister  restore Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, to his previous position  as chairman of the country’s most prominent microcredit bank, Grameen Bank.  The bank’s nonprofit, Grameen America, which Yunus chairs, had donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. (Gee, I wonder why.) 

There is a recent video of Hasina explaining this episode to her Parliament.

To be clear, it was illegal for Hillary Clinton to use her position and influence with the U.S. government to assist any donor to  her spouse’s charitable foundation, and if you really think it was just her spouse’s, I have a perpetual motion machine for sale that you might like. She also knew it was illegal. Federal ethics laws require government officials to recuse themselves from matters that have an impact on their family’s business. 

Federal laws prohibit bribes, too.

Yunus had been disqualified from serving in the position, but had illegally served anyway, and collected a salary,  for a decade past the statutory limit. After complaints were filed, he was terminated by order of the high Bangladesh court. So not only was Clinton delivering a political favor bought and paid for by a Clinton Foundation “donation,” she was asking the Prime Minister to break her own nation’s laws.

This is real, stinky, high-level, low-class corruption. There is no other way to describe it. Clinton was using her position with the U.S. government for personal profit, and abusing the public trust by doing the bidding of foreign nationals in exchange for cash. Moreover, you know and I know that this could not have been some weird one-off aberration due to Hillary’s interest in Bangladesh. If she did this once there, she did it in other instances. I cannot emphasize enough how serious conduct it is. It is as unethical, venal and dirty as public service gets.

This was your candidate, Democrats. This was your champion, feminists. This was your standard-bearer, liberals. This is the woman whose defeat has sent you into the maw of madness, progressives. Now what?

Hillary Clinton was unfit to serve by virtue of her conduct and her character; I said so for many months, and this is smoking gun evidence. I will be watching to see who among her supporters and cheering section has the integrity to admit it.

I admit: the story shocks even me.

Let’s see if the revelation by the Prime Minister makes the headlines in the news shows, the Times and the Post. Let’s see how the Clinton machine tries to spin it.

You know they will.

 

Ethics Hero: Pop Star Nicki Minaj

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I wouldn’t cross the street to watch over-the-top, beautiful but annoyingly nasal pop singer Nicki Minaj perform, but I’d walk miles to shake her hand.

Over the weekend, the mega-star answered Twitter questions about a lip syncing contest using her “Regret in Your Tears” music video. One audacious follower asked if the singer would pay for her college tuition. It never hurts to ask, right?  Minaj not only agreed but offered to pay the tuition for other fans, tweeting,

Show me straight A’s that I can verify w/ur school and I’ll pay it. Who wants to join THAT contest?!?!🤷🏽‍♀️ Dead serious. Shld I set it up?

And she did set it up. Requests came in from all quarters, containing transcripts and student loan balances.

“U want to go to college but can’t? How much do u need to get u in school? Is that the only thing stopping u?” Minaj asked an immigrant fan who said she could not afford classes. Minaj  sent the money. She also assisted a single mother who needed $500 for her remaining tuition, and sent $6,000 to cover the fall semester for another Twitter follower, including his room and board, courses and meal plan.

Yes, I am keeping my fingers crossed that Minaj’s spontaneous outburst of kindness and charity isn’t exploited by scammers. She’s certainly laying herself wide open to be misled. Yet one cannot be generous and compassionate and not be vulnerable to the worst in society. I’m sure Nicki knows that. To her credit, she is willing to court the risk to change some lives for the better.

She’s a deserving Ethics Hero, and boy, I needed one today.

_____________________

Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

Ethics Dunce: Marwan Barghouti, The Snacking Hunger Striker

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

See, this is the thing: if you are secretly snacking while leading a hunger strike, you’re doing it all wrong. Gandhi didn’t do this. At least we don’t think he did.

 Over a thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are in the third week of a mass hunger strike, demanding better conditions. Now the leader of the strike, terrorist Marwan Barghouti who i being  held in solitary confinement at the Kishon prison, has been caught on camera eating cookies and a candy bar.  Israel released videos of the would-be martyr sneaking snacks in his cell, and naturally  Palestinian leaders called foul, dismissing the videos as fakes aimed at demoralizing his hungry followers. The problem is that Barghouti has cheated before.

In 2004, leading another hunger strike, he was caught on camera eating while his fellow prisoners were refraining from food like good hunger strikers. Not knowing he was being surveilled,  the Palestinian leader covered the door and window of his cell,  washed his hands and chowed down after asking wardens for food.  The Israeali Prison Services spokesman said that cameras were set up to show the fasting prisoners how their leader was behaving. “Barghouti is sitting on a pot of meat and he sends his friends to die,” the spokesman said at the time. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On Bill Maher’s Incest Joke About Ivanka Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

This is my favorite photo of Bill Maher. It captures the essence of his charm, his manners and his wit so perfectly…

Following the (much deserved and still not sufficient) criticism of Fox News’ Jesse Watters’ leering “joke” about Ivanka Trump’s handling of a microphone, HBO’s Bill Maher gave conservative critics an opportunity to trot out the  “we have standards, where are yours?” accusation against liberals when the host of “Real Time” made suggestive gestures while talking about how the First Daughter “helps” President Trump.

“What do you make of Ivanka and her efforts to sort of humanize her father?”, the comic asked guest Gabe Sherman ( a writer, book author, Fox News critic and a vocal one regarding Watters’ incivility). “We see all this misogyny at Fox News [ KABOOM!, incidentally. If there is anyone on earth other than the President more ethically estopped from accusing someone else of misogyny, it’s Maher, who flings “cunt” and “twat” at women he disagrees with and who cheered Bill Clinton’s exploitation of Monica Lewinsky on the grounds that “he works hard, and he deserves it”); we see it in Donald Trump himself. A lot of us thought, Ivanka is gonna be our saving grace.” Then, as he mimed Ivanka masturbating her father, Maher continued, “When he’s about to nuke Finland or something, she’s gonna walk into the bedroom and—”Daddy, Daddy…’Don’t do it, Daddy!”‘

This most recent vulgarity by Maher as his audience of hateful left-wing boors hooted on cue even moved the progressive tool Daily Beast to complain that “if liberals are going to castigate Donald Trump for his boorish, sexist behavior, they shouldn’t behave in a similar fashion” —a point that is too little and far too late in the case of proudly boorish, sexist Bill Maher.

Ethics Observations: Continue reading →