A popular, effective and unethical prosecutorial practice among federal investigators is to coerce businesses and individuals into waiving the attorney client privilege by threatening indictments. The privilege of having absolutely private communications with one’s attorneys in order to get legal advice is a linchpin of the justice system and each citizen’s access to fair treatment under the law. Forcing individuals to give the privilege up under threat of prosecution is and has always been wrong; after all, a waiver made under a threat is hardly “voluntary.” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, (D-Va.), has now introduced H.R. 4326, complementing legislation filed in the Senate earlier this year by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, to bar this practice. Continue reading
Ethics Heroes
Ethics Quote of the Week
“Nice try, Ted Alvin Klaudt, of Walker, S.D.”
The South Dakota Daily Republic, in an editorial commenting on former state lawmaker Ted Klaudt’s warning to South Dakota’s media this week that they cannot use his name without his prior authorization.
Klaudt claimed that he name was protected by his recent copyright of it, a transparent attempt to avoid news media mention of Klaudt’s 2007 sentencing to 44 years in prison for four counts of second-degree rape. The ex-legislator was convicted of touching the breasts and genitals of his two foster daughters while conducting phony examinations on the girls on the premise that he would help them sell their reproductive eggs.
He apparently wants to have the sole legal right to call such conduct “Klaudting.”
Ethics Alarms salutes the Daily Republic for having the courage and wit to immediately challenge Klaudt’s efforts to muzzle the press.
Ethics Heroes, Holiday Division: The Philly Mystery Diners
Ethics Newsline reported a story that we almost missed: a mysterious anonymous couple ate breakfast at the Aramingo Diner in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia, and paid for both their meal and that of the diners at a table next to them. Their spontaneous act of generosity set off a “pay it forward” chain reaction worthy of Haley Joel Osment that had one waitress crying tears of joy. For the next five hours, everybody paid someone else’s check, “paying it forward,” with no concern about the price of the meals involved.
Was it just a group of people who decided to act out a scene from a Christmas movie Frank Capra forgot to make? Did it only happen because the diner had reasonably priced meals? Was the whole thing staged by some street theater group?
Let’s hope it was not a stunt, and that the experience of being nice to strangers for no reason other than that it’s a good habit to have will last longer than the family Christmas tree.
As for the Mystery Couple—Ethics Heroes for sure—good work, and Merry Christmas!
The Savage Saga: Wrong Embryo Ethics Unresolved
The disturbing story of Carolyn and Sean Savage’s pregnancy was a hot topic in September, but it is barely remembered now. I am hoping that bioethicists and legal specialists are still cogitating over it, however, because the ethical and legal issues aren’t going away. They are probably just around the corner. Continue reading
Climategate’s Ethics Heroes, Villains and Dunces
The hacked East Anglia University computer files are slowly revealing the ethical values of more than just the scientists. They are also serving as accurate detector of integrity or the lack of it; bias or fairness, honesty, accountability, and courage.
Almost every day, a public statement, op-ed or news item exposes a hero, dunce, or villain or in the climate change debate, like those nifty reagents and black lights they use in the “CSI” TV show and its 37 spin-offs. Here are some who have appeared thus far: Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Stacy Horton
Ethicists are unduly fond of presenting lose-lose hypotheticals, “Sophie’s Choice” situations in which a necessary action will also create a horrible result, and inaction is not an option. Fortunately for us, such situations rarely occur outside the pages of William Styron novels. A New Zealand man recently faced such a crisis, however, and he took the ethical course, and the only course: the best he could do under the circumstances, knowing he would have to live with the consequences for the rest of his life. Ironically, in the ultimate ethical dilemma, ethics becomes irrelevant.There is no right choice, and there is no wrong one, except to do nothing at all. Our sympathy and sorrow go out to Stacy Horton and his family.
Ethics Heroes: “Pharmed Out”
A group of 100 medical ethicists, physicians and others calling themselves Pharmed Out have written the head of the National Institutes of Health and requested that the NIH fund studies examining the effect financial and industrial conflicts of interest have on medical research. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Hillary Clinton
In an interview in the current Vogue, Hillary Clinton explains how she became Secretary of State: Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Joe Girardi
I’m a life-time Boston Red Sox fan, and the New York Yankees winning anything is like a knife to my heart. Nevertheless, fair is fair. Joe Girardi, the Yankee manager, is an Ethics Hero for November.
Driving home from the Stadium after winning the World Series last night, Girardi stopped to help a motorist who had lost control of his car on the Cross Country Parkway and had crashed into a wall.
Girardi could have passed the buck, as most of us do in those situations. Lots of other cars would have an opportunity to help the driver, and Girardi had every reason to think he had done enough that night—a historic victory, a celebration, and now it was time to go home. It would have been easy to drive on. Nobody would know, nobody would criticize.
He did the right thing: Joe Girardi stopped to help a fellow human being in trouble. His choice had nothing to do with his being a New York celebrity, the manager of baseball’s most famous team and recently-crowned champion. It had to do with fulfilling his obligations as a citizen and a human being.
Today you’re my hero, Joe.
Just don’t expect me to be a Yankee fan.
Ethics Hero: Peter Shellem (1960-2009)
Newspapers are on the ropes these days, and sometimes I am not sorry. Even the best of them are too often sloppy, superficial, biased and incompetent. If they go down for the count, however, we will dearly miss the likes of Peter Shellem, an old-fashioned gum-shoe reporter who used his professional skills not only to find the truth, but to save lives in the process.
If you were not a regular reader of the Harrisburg, PA Patriot-News, the odds are that you never heard of Shellem. I hadn’t, until I read his New York Times’ obituary this morning. His passion was investigating the cases and prosecutions of convicted prisoners when something about their guilt didn’t seem quite right to him. The Times notes that Defense attorney Barry Scheck called Shellem ” a one man journalism innocence project.” Shellem’s investigations freed five wrongly convicted Americans, one of them who had been in jail 28 years, since he was fourteen.
A colleague at the Patriot-Ledger, in a remembrance, writes that Shellem did what he did because he was genuinely offended that our justice system could be so unjust. In this he was ahead of his time, for only recently, in the wake of the Duke lacrosse scandal, has the extent and impact of prosecutorial excesses begun to inspire the media and law enforcement to scrutinize past convictions and current prosecutions with due skepticism. There are more innocent people behind bars than we once believed, as well as many guilty prisoners who did not receive the rights guaranteed them as citizens. Peter Shellem didn’t help all of them directly, but his work did.
It appears that Peter Shellem committed suicide. Though he was apparently dissatisfied with his life, we should not be. His work was meaningful; his impact on the lives of others was profound, and his work set high ethical standards for us all. His credo: If you see a wrong, fix it. If you recognize injustice, expose it. If you detect corruption, stop it.
We should all aspire to follow his example.
Ethics Alarms 