Law & Law Enforcement

Now THIS Is An Unethical Prosecutor!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Ray County (Missouri) Prosecutor Camille Johnston, 46, had “inappropriate sexual affairs “with three men, including a defense attorney representing several criminal defendants in cases prosecuted by Ray County, and Juan David Gutierrez an illegal immigrant accused of sexually assaulting another woman.  The third unethical sexual relationship was with yet another defendant in a criminal case, and Johnston fired the employee who discovered it.

Yikes. Even the late Steven Bochco didn’t dream up a prosecutor that sex-crazed, and all of his lawyers were in perpetual heat.

Johnston’s fling with Gutierrez was her masterpiece, however. Get this: Gutierrez was being prosecuted in Ray County, but this Ray County prosecutor gave him the keys to her car so he could flee to Florida, where she joined him on her vacation!

Johnston, the filings against her state, was guilty of an “obvious appearance of a conflict of interest” —- “Appearance”???? — had “forfeited the office of prosecuting attorney.” 

Yeah, I’d say that’s fair.

As soon as Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed documents to remove Johnston from office, a judge approved a preliminary order suspending her. 

I don’t understand this story at all. Did the woman have a psychotic break? How can someone rise to the level of prosecutor, or for that matter pass the bar after graduating from law school, who is capable of behaving this way? Maybe she learned she has only a year to live, and decided to go out with a bang…well, several bangs I guess. I would have guessed that she was hideous or something and desperate for a date, but she’s not. My next guess would have been that she was so sexually alluring that defendants and colleagues were constantly courting her, but that isn’t evident either. How could this happen?

And yet, over the past 20 years, I have been stunned and disillusioned by the low level of professional ethics of so many prosecutors, who are supposed to maintain exemplary ethics. I suppose having sex with anyone in pants is, all in all, not as unethical as knowingly prosecuting an innocent defendant, and that ethical breach is a lot more common than going on vacation with an illegal who assaults women.

__________________

Pointer: Young Bill

Dear NPR: I Guess Your Listeners Like Being Lied To But I Don’t, So Stay The Hell Out Of My In-Box…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One way you can tell with 100% certainly brainwashed (or dishonest) progressives is if they complain about NPR and PBS losing their government funding. It is the watermark of “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” gaslighting. This morning I received an unsolicited and unwelcome exhortation in my email inbox from the propagandist above, insulting my intelligence by seeking my money by telling me…

A billion-dollar hit to our industry is enough to make any Chief Financial Officer sweat. And that’s exactly what happened to public media one year ago today, when Congress voted to eliminate federal funding.  My job as NPR’s CFO isn’t just to balance the books; it’s to protect a vital public asset. Today, I’m asking you to take action with me.

The NPR Network cannot back down on our mission because we know that millions of people rely on this trusted journalism and programming. And, I am so grateful that we don’t need to back down because supporters like you stand with us. Our strength – and our independence – has always come from you, the public. The NPR Network continues because the public decides it will. 

I can tell you firsthand: you can’t run a world-class, independent newsroom on hope. A free press doesn’t just happen.  Public media needs growing, reliable financial support to fuel essential reporting and build what’s next.  Now is the time to give. Not just for yourself, but for our collective right to know the facts. Your donation of any amount is needed. Every dollar makes a difference.

Power to the public,

Daphne Kwon

P.S. When you make a donation to support this essential public service, you declare that you value access to the facts, for all.

“Access to all the facts”!

By pure coincidence, shortly after reading that garbage I saw that Newsbusters had posted some of the transcript of NPR’s anchor A Martinez (he humbly doesn’t claim to be THE Martinez) interview Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn) regarding President Trump’s recent televised speech. Highlights, as the Axis hack repeatedly invited the Democrat to attack the President and provided no balance or skepticism whatsoever:

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Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note [ADDED: A Special Rebuke To A Banned Commenter]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:

“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”

Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:

“It was the third death in a week involving encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine…It was at least the 10th death involving encounters with immigration agents since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation campaign last year.”

That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.

Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.

And Speaking Of DEI: The Ethical Conflict Regarding Racial Disparities In Academic Performance Raises Its Ugly Head Again In NYC

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

62 %, approximately, of the students in New York City’s public schools are black or Hispanic. In its eight most prestigious and academically rigorous high schools, however, only10% of the students in the incoming freshman class will be black or Hispanic, just like last year. 80% of the seats will be filled with Asian and white students, mostly Asians. This pattern of racial and ethnic disparity has existed for years at the city’s elite public high schools. Not surprisingly, the seeming inequity creates anger, frustration, demagoguery and and accusations of racism. Solutions, however, have been elusive and remain so.

Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, perhaps the most famous of the city’s specialized high schools (after the renowned High School For the Performing Arts), only awarded three of its 777 offers to black students, 21 to Hispanic students, and the rest to white and Asian students. Admission to these schools is considered a potential way out of poverty, but that factor (true or not), is not included in the consideration of who gets in. The sole criteria are the scores on a 114-question, three-hour exam, the Specialized High School Admissions Test. It is designed to assess a student’s math, English and critical thinking skills, along with time management ability.

Under the boot-strapping “disparate impact” logic used to find racism whenever results don’t fall neatly into demographic percentages, the admission test has been perpetually attacked as racially discriminatory, but no one has figured out how or why. Nor has anyone been able to devise a skills or ability test that does not consistently result in the same racial and ethnic stratification. Hispanics do better than blacks, whites perform better than Hispanics, and Asians perform the best of all. Sure enough, while just 19% all public school students in New York City are Asian, they received 57% of the offers for the specialized schools.

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The Other Shoe Drops On The Collusive Trump-IRS Deal. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

In May, Ethics Alarms expressed its horror here, here and here over the unethical, conflicted deal engineered by Trump’s acting-Attorney General and Trump’s Treasury Dept. to bestow undeserved benefits on the President, his family, and the Trump Organization. I wrote at the end of the last of these, “I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense.”

Well Calloo! Callay! It has been stopped, and very emphatically too.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her 56-page order yesterday that the President and his fellow plaintiffs, his adult sons and the Trump Organization LLC, may not refer in any judicial, administrative or other official proceeding to the “purported ‘settlement agreement'” that gave them broad protection from federal government audits and investigations. The judge then sanctioned the attorneys that represented Trump in his personal capacity, Daniel Z. Epstein of Epstein & Co. LLC and Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC.

Good. They should be sanctioned. They should be suspended. If I had the choice, I would disbar them. They are both a disgrace to the legal profession.

“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,” Judge Williams wrote. “It was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the parties were not adverse.”

“Because the parties were not adverse”! Bingo! On that basis, the case should have been at very least stayed by this same judge until Trump was out of office and not controlling the adversary party, and may I add, DUH! Judge Williams was asleep at the switch in May, and perhaps that adds to her obvious fury now. Her one excuse is that she didn’t realize exactly what was going on because it happened so fast and no President has had the gall to try anything like this before.

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Ethics Dunce: Yes, It’s Ana Navarro Again!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

This is a remarkable exchange for several reasons.

First, Ana Navarro, the long-time fake Republican, token Hispanic, DEI and Trump-Deranged shill who has a regular platform on ABC’s “news show” “The View,” makes a deceitful statement designed to mislead viewers, especially those who have been in a cave for the past two years. “There have been at least five” people killed by ICE she intones, as if the immigration enforcement agents have been going house to house murdering people. Her deception is right out of the playbook of the Left’s “defund the police” lunatics. Law enforcement officers sometimes have to shoot people to protect themselves. They also sometimes kill people who irresponsibly place themselves in harm’s way by interfering with the officers’ lawful execution of their duties, or when lawbreakers resist arrest. These incidents are investigated and sometimes result in discipline or even criminal charges.

Second, CNN’s Abby Philips, who has to be the most dead-faced round-table moderator in the history of television and one of the most incompetent, just sits there like a barnacle, as usual. An ethical moderator would correct Ana’s garbage on the spot, lest the discussion be built on a false foundation.

Finally, listen to Navarro’s babbling when she is caught like a rat in a trap! Caroline Sunshine asks, “Do you know the names as well of Americans who have been killed by illegal immigrants? Do you have that list, too?” [Aside: Sunshine is one of those people who makes me realize that I made a serious wrong turn somewhere in what I laughingly call “my career”: to say her credentials to be a pundit on CNN in such a discussion are paper-thin is to be generous. Sunshine is a former Disney and B-movie starlet who was rapidly advanced through GOP and Trump I press ranks substantially on the basis of her looks.] That was exactly the right question to expose Navarro’s bias and intellectual dishonesty. Navarro’s reply…

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My Legal Ethics Association Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
Great. Unethical legal ethicists....

I have gradually discovered, over the past few months, that the association of legal ethics lawyers in which I am a card-carrying member is, in fact, biased, partisan, and not particularly ethical at all.

Membership in the group is considered a credential and an important one, especially since few legal ethics experts have degrees in the field. (My mentor in the area, Michael Daigneault, is one of the few who do.) I don’t belong to the association because of the credential—membership in the ABA ethics section is regarded as a credential too, and that association is crippled by bias, so to hell with it—but because it once seemed like a useful network and because the listserv keeps me relatively informed of major developments in the field.

I knew the group was overwhelmingly left-biased because the whole legal profession is left-biased. Conservative members generally foxhole during discussions that turn political, and they often do. When I have decided to be Popeye (“It’s all I can stand, ‘cuz I can’t stand no more!”) and point out a particularly annoying outbreak, I receive sheepish emails off site from members who tell me that they agree with me. They just don’t have the guts to say so on the site.

Last month, as I have mentioned here, I raised for discussion the difficult problem of how to square the legal profession’s protection of its many (MANY) alcoholic and substance-addicted lawyers with the duties of candor and communication to clients, supposedly a core legal ethics requirement. The group’s reaction was to “circle the wagons,” deny the problem, and attack me. When I responded in words I believed were appropriate to the attacks, I was singled out and threatened by the group’s president, who said that he had received complaints about my “incivility.”

Translation: Non-conforming positions that made some members uncomfortable are not welcome. Shut up, Jack.

I haven’t participated since. I had already been disillusioned twice in the previous weeks, once when the consensus was that ethics lawyer somehow get an exception from the legal ethics duty to report lawyers they know are unfit to practice ( it would take too much time, you see) and that the fact that bar associations, contrary to the public’s belief, not only do a terrible job policing the profession but intentionally make it difficult for the public to flag unethical lawyers. “How dare you!” would be my summary of the group’s reaction to my pointing out that fact.

Today I saw a post on the listserv by an esteemed member whose signature contained this as a feature:

“A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.” —-Declaration of Independence

So now I have to put up with partisan, No Kings, Trump Deranged virtue signaling. I am sorely tempted to drop a note with the coda, “These people are crazy.” —President Donald J. Trump, 2026 State of the Union Message.

I’m sure I would again be the target of censorship, and maybe, finally, banned. On one hand, I still find the listserv a valuable resource. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, they are hypocrites and unethical., and somebody ought to tell them.

Now what?

Ethics Dunce, Unethical Judge, and Possible Zombie: Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge Diana Tennis

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The zombie speculation is because I’m sure I’ve seen that expression on “The Walking Dead” or “World War Z.”

The Florida Supreme Court wants to fine Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge Diana M. Tennis (she’s in Orlando) after she admitted making more than 900 donations to left-leaning political causes, we learn from Law.com.

The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission discovered last month that Judge Tennis gave nearly $30,000 in more than 900 separate donations to progressive candidates and those aligned with the Democratic Party.

Florida judicial canons explicitly bar judges from making political contributions:

Canon 7

A Judge or Candidate for Judicial Office Shall Refrain From Inappropriate Political Activity

A judge…shall not:

…make a contribution to a political organization or candidate.

Tennis told the commission that she mistakenly thought that the rule only applied to donations to candidates for state office, not federal ones. That means that she can’t read or understand statutes in plain language. Nothing in that rule above limits the restriction to state political activity. This judge is either dishonest or incompetent. Why would the Florida Supreme Court allow such a hack to continue sitting on the bench at all? She’s partisan, conflicted and untrustworthy.

The more I examine the issue, the more I realize that there are an unacceptable number of incompetent and unethical judges rotting our justice system, indeed an unacceptable percentage of bad judges that I fear equals a critical mass. Tennis is far from the worst, and she has no business judging anything more challenging than the state fair apple pie competition.

Then there is that zombie thing…

The Star Spangled Naked Teacher!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

It’s been a long time since Ethics Alarms had one of its trademark Naked Teacher Principle tales or even one of it’s many variations, like the Nearly Naked Teacher’s Volunteer Principle, the Drag Queen School Principal Principle, the Naked Porn-Performing Political Candidate Principle, and the Too Sexy Firefighter Principle, to name just a few. This one, from Alexander, Georgia, has nothing to do with July Fourth, except that I discovered the story this morning. It is certainly past time for one of these posts: the last one under the tag was here, and it was only about the related Naked Mayor Principle, involving the moronic mayor of Minot, North Dakota who accidentally sent an explicit nude video of himself to the city’s attorney.

Above is Maris Nichols, 25, a married Georgia high school teacher, who really likes having sex with students: she’s been indicted for showing at least six students the sweet mysteries of life in her classroom, at a golf course, and in a closet). Two of the teenagers were younger than 16. What puts Maris into the Naked Teacher Principle category is that she is a very provocative OnlyFans performer, and was being blackmailed by some of her students—it is unclear if they were among the one she was boinking—for better grades. They had discovered the OnlyFans channel she owns, operates, and uses to display her excellent Linda Lovelace impression, among other things.

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Chris Cuomo Generously Reminds Everyone That It Is Possible To Be Even Less Coherent and Legally Astute Than Justice Jackson

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Every time I think about the fact that Chris Cuomo, once the golden boy of CNN, is a lawyer I want to burn my law school diploma. Every time I think of all the money “Fredo” was paid to make Americans dumber and more ignorant (as when he announced that “hate speech” was not protected by the First Amendment), I begin questioning the choices I have made in life that brought me to my current lowly position in life. And every time he opens his mouth on his podcast, I want to hold his empty head up to my ear so I can hear the ocean.

Here, in full, is Chis’s most recent foray into Dunning-Kruger chaos:

“In the eyes of the law, Dobbs was the right decision. Why? Roe created a legal rationale that did not exist! And if you do not create it constitutionally or legislatively, it should not exist. And legislation is where you fill in the hole between implicit and explicit, and that wasn’t done with Roe. The Congress should have codified Roe v. Wade. But they were never going to. Why? Because it’s such a useful device to divide us, so helpful to the parties. Dobbs was therefore the right decision. Well, then why didn’t the liberal justices [vote with the Dobbs majority]—because it’s political. Because they feel it’s political. They don’t want to say it, but they’re all female. I mean, now they’re all female on the left. And it’s political. Now, do I like their political position? Yes, I do. I believe that reproductive rights are a thing. And I think that they are obviously invested in women, and they should be. And that taking it from them was taking a right from women. And that’s the first time I’ve seen that done, except for prohibition. And I think it was wrong. But legally, I think it was the right decision.”

Well thank-you, Chris, for that anala…wait, WHAT?

That dog’s breakfast of Authentic Frontier Gibberish makes one of Jackson’s dissents seem like Oliver Wendell Holmes at his best. Reproductive rights “are a thing”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? The reason Roe made no sense is that there is no such thing as a foggy “reproductive right” that includes killing unborn children. Prohibition took away a real right as embodied in the Declaration of Independence, as getting drunk is clearly, for some, “the pursuit of happiness.”

Neither Roe v. Wade nor Dobbs were designed to “divide us,” and the reason Congress didn’t codify it under Carter, or Clinton, or Obama, Chris, you moron, is because they didn’t think it was necessary. They thought (as did I) that the issue was settled by Roe, at least legally. Abortion was still always going to be divisive; no law was going to change that. Remember the Defense of Marriage Act? Abortion is squarely in the category of an ethics conflict, and ethics conflicts are always divisive by nature. Roe was shoehorned into the law by the Supreme Court to settle the issue and end division, just as Chief Justice Taney foolishly thought the Dred Scott ruling would end the controversy over slavery.

Oh, and would someone point out to Chris that there weren’t three women dissenting in Dobbs, because Justice Breyer hadn’t retired yet?