That’s tainted Special Counsel Jack Smith wearing an anti-Trump shirt last week.
Nothing says independent, non partisan, fair, objective and unbiased like appearing in public billboarding a message attacking the official you were supposed to investigate.
At least he’s a defiant, transparent unethical prosecutor.
What an asshole.
I paused Part I when I hit item #6 and the post began reaching Alizia Tyler-level length. Since then, about 24 hours ago, there have been new revelations, commentary and developments. Picking up where I left off…
7. The New York Times tracked down the detailed filings in the private Title IX proceedings Cornell undertook, including hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with “Jane Doe,” her friends and the alleged rapists. This section from the Times report is, I think, definitive (the Times is playing it straight for a change):
At 3:05 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, one of Jane Doe’s roommates sent her a text.
“Are you coming home tonight?” she asked.
Four minutes later, Jane Doe texted back that she didn’t know.
The roommate went to sleep, she would tell investigators. When she woke up at 11 a.m., she uploaded a photo of her empty room to Snapchat. “Only I made it back home,” she wrote on the post.
Around 11:15 a.m., she said, Jane Doe arrived home, still in her “big boots and small dress” from the night before, according to the roommate. She had consumed ketamine and had sex with multiple men, she told her two roommates. One roommate told investigators that Jane Doe did not use the word “rape” or “assault” yet.
It seemed like she was “in shock,” her other roommate later told investigators, “not really understanding the gravity of what she was saying.”
The next day, on Oct. 21, Jane Doe went to her “big sister” — a woman designated as a mentor — at Cornell’s Tri Delta sorority and told her there were rumors circulating that she was a “slut.” The big sister, a junior at Cornell, told investigators that Jane Doe added with a laugh that “unfortunately they are true.”
To me, this means that the accuser was not raped and didn’t regard herself as being raped. The editorial comments of her friends indicate biased allies doing their best to frame the event in the manner most favorable to someone they care about. I know, I know: victims of sexual assault blame themselves, are awash in shame, and often take time to “process” what occurred. Or they are persuaded by others to reexamine what happened in a way that avoids accountability, provides a path to financial damages, and that victimizes others. Whichever went on here, I don’t see how a criminal prosecution and conviction is possible unless politics tramples the law—which, as we all know, it often does.
8. The student received a text message from Jonathan Newell, one of the men she would go on to accuse of sexual assault. Note that his name is out there but hers is being withheld by the news media, despite the fact that both, or neither, may be victims. “I just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night,” Newell wrote. He said that he and Matthew Ingalls, another student she accused of sexual assault, both “felt terrible” that they were too stoned and drunk to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”
“Jane Doe” replied to him, “At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly I really liked being with you and Matt.” Not illegal means, “I wasn’t raped, but you know that.”
9. Here, thanks to reader James Flood, who flagged it in the comments to Part I, is feminist Camille Paglia on the basic principles of feminist hypocrisy the incident and one like it highlight…
10. Among the messages in the infamous SnapChat exchange among members of the fraternity during the orgy or what ever you want to call it was an alert that there was “free pussy” upstairs. Victory Girls opines in part,
“The female student’s original claims were that sex and drug use at the Chi Phi fraternity house just off of Cornell’s campus was consensual, but now, the story, perceived to be pushed under the table for two years, has risen back to the surface. And now, Jane Doe is telling a different story…his kind of stuff happens every weekend on any given university campus-this is one time that it is actually hitting the news…This case is not just a case of them versus her. This case, and the behavior that surrounds it, are a cry for help…
“Some young people go to college with a specific career goal in mind. Some young people come to a university to explore their identities, to embark upon new horizons and, yes, to belong. …Fraternities and sororities sell the price tag of lifelong friends, leadership opportunities and exclusive networks and experiences on their websites and social media of carefully-curated videos and photos. The guys want the hot girls at the parties and the girls want to go to the parties at the “husband house.”
… Fraternities use slogans like, “building better men”, “friendship, justice and learning”, “transforming lives”, “courage to be more”, to name a few of their catchy and contrived mottos. Sororities talk of philanthropy, “bravery”, “togetherness”, “family”, “values” and “inspiring positive change”…Nothing says “bonding” and “gentlemen” like putting “free pussy” in a group chat. On the flip side of this coin, the young woman who was allegedly raped spent some time drinking at a sorority house on campus before going to the Chi Phi house to meet a guy she was chatting with for an alleged hook-up. How she ended up upstairs with no girlfriends who value “togetherness” is also a big, glaring question. So much for the “values” of the sisterhood.
…Special prosecution or not, this case, and all of the young people involved, is a tragic depiction of a toxic campus community….they all need to take a good, hard look. Universities’ blanket statements that “they take sexual violence seriously” and their willful ignorance of what happens on off-campus houses that still bring money into the University is not enough. Organizations that claim to raise “gentlemen and leaders” and “brave women” do not lend themselves to this type of behavior. A “gentleman” in a formal suit one evening who later participates in a chat (or who is an “innocent” bystander in said chat) advertising “free pussy upstairs” is not a “productive member of society.”…A girl that offers to sniff ketamine off a guy’s junk and have a threesome is a woman with severe insecurities who needs REAL friends who will stop her from the self-destructive behavior that she may later regret and encourage her to have dignity and respect herself. This is not a Cornell problem. Or a college problem. Or a left versus right problem. Or even a legal problem. This is a bigger MORAL problem. This is a right from wrong problem…
I have stated many times here that I believe fraternities are disasters-in-waiting, despite anecdotal evidence that they and sororities have social and socializing value. My college killed its fraternities in the 19th Century. “Morality” is not the issue here, and citing it just fogs the conversation. People are being hurt by this kind of conduct. Ethical people don’t engage in conduct that hurts people. For “Jane Doe” to seek to harm (or benefit from while harming) those who were willing participants in an activity she consented to and encouraged or appeared to consent to and encourage is unethical.
11. The New York Times reports that two of the fraternity members accused by “Jane” were expelled. Another who had already graduated is barred from campus. Two more were suspended. The remaining two men, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered not to contact Jane Doe, to study sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention, and to write “reflection papers.” Their crime was being part of a group of men who entered the room after reading the Snapchat “free pussy” message. A lawsuit filed by Kretzschmar against Cornell shows that he was not found responsible for sexual assault. Cornell ruled that he had committed a lesser offense of “attempted sexual exploitation.”
Come on.
Watch “Animal House,” for heaven’s sake.
A lawyer for Kretzschmar said in a statement that the discipline his client received showed that he was “never accused of, nor found responsible for, rape. He was not even present during any sexual activity.”
“Jane Doe” has received no academic discipline at all. Ever since the Obama era’s despicable (but typical for that administration) “Dear Colleague” letter, universities have operated from a position of presumed guilt for male students accused of sexual assault and presumed victim status for their accusers. You know. Justice. “Equity.”
There is a lot more, but that’s enough for now.
I alluded to my post on the old Ethics Scoreboard about the infamous Duke lacrosse team rape case in a recent EA post, suggesting that it may be a template for what we are going to see transpire in the still developing Cornell frat house gang rape saga. Fred Davidson, a cherished reader and commenter here, tracked down the essay on The Wayback Machine and sent the link in the comments. I’m reposting that essay here. If ever a prosecutor was a candidate to be just as unethical as Mike Nifong (who was disbarred), Letitia James is it. I want to acknowledge my webmaster for Ethics Alarms who edited and formatted all my posts, the talented Lauren Larson. Would that she was still working with me now.
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From the North Carolina Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct:
“The prosecutor represents the sovereign and, therefore, should use restraint in the discretionary exercise of government powers, such as in the selection of cases to prosecute. During trial, the prosecutor is not only an advocate, but he or she also may make decisions normally made by an individual client, and those affecting the public interest should be fair to all. In our system of criminal justice, the accused is to be given the benefit of all reasonable doubt. With respect to evidence and witnesses, the prosecutor has responsibilities different from those of a lawyer in private practice; the prosecutor should make timely disclosure to the defense of available evidence known to him or her that tends to negate the guilt of the accused, mitigate the degree of the offense, or reduce the punishment. Further, a prosecutor should not intentionally avoid pursuit of evidence merely because he or she believes it will damage the prosecutor’s case or aid the accused.“
How Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong can reconcile his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case with this explanatory comment from his bar association’s rule governing the ethics of prosecutors is a mystery. But it is no mystery what his violation of these principles has created: one of the worst ethics train wrecks of the past ten years, a mess that can stand with such recent ethics fiascos as the Terri Schiavo dispute and the Valerie Plame Affair. In fact, Nifong’s handiwork may have caused more human wreckage than either of these. But like all ethics train wrecks, this one had more than one shaky hand on the throttle:
The Duke lacrosse team: While not earning their horrific treatment by Nifong, many of the players on the team were irresponsible in their conduct, disrespectful to the hired exotic dancer who ultimately became their accuser, and reckless in their disregard for the reputation of the university and its sometimes contentious relations with the Durham community. For example, a few hours after the alleged rape, team member Ryan McFadyen sent an email to his team mates in which he fantasized about murdering and sexually abusing strippers. It may well have been composed as a tasteless joke, but it was certainly evidence of an unacceptable level of contempt and callousness toward the human beings the team had hired to entertain them at the party, not to mention strong evidence of a brain-pan insufficiency. McFadyen was suspended after a team mate, in another ethically questionable move, decided to circulate the disgusting e-mail so that it wound up in the hands of the police and, worse still, the media. Did it have any probative value in the case? No—McFadyen wasn’t one of the players implicated or indicted. Still, he ended up suspended from school, the local media used the e-mail to make the team look like a tribe of cannibals, and the seeds of racial conflict were sown and fertilized. The e-mail effectively threw gasoline on an already incendiary situation, and contributed mightily to the lacrosse team’s coach resigning and Duke canceling the lacrosse season.
Nice work, guys.
I was first made aware of the sudden re-emergence of a 2024 gang rape allegation as a media and social media obsession when a friend who was raped began posting furiously about the story on Facebook. A knee-jerk progressive, she is certain that there was a cover-up at Cornell and that the alleged victim is telling the truth, because all women must be believed.
I don’t know what really happened at the Chi Phi fraternity on a fateful October night in 2024, and neither do you, and neither does my friend. Anyone who presumes they do know based on a partisan or ideological bias has elected to board the newly launched Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck in the dining car. Shame on them.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is having a bad year—look at the sudden resurgence of anti-Semitism here—and fraternity rape hysteria should be viewed with particular skepticism. The infamous Duke Lacrosse case occurred in 2006 and my commentary was lost when the old Ethics Scoreboard left the building, but it is still a tag on Ethics Alarms, with this the most directly relevant post. The imaginary gang rape that disgraced Rolling Stone was extensively covered here, however, as you can see. In 2014, “Rolling Stone” reporter Sabrina Erdly wrote a feature about an imaginary co-ed named “Jackie” being gang raped at a University of Virginia fraternity party. UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan, a good little feminist, suspended all fraternities with no actual evidence of wrongdoing. But you know, men are pigs, women are always the victims, and one must always believe all women, even imaginary ones (there was no “Jackie”) when they cry “Rape!”
Ethics Alarms has analyzed several instances of false rape claims as well as the cynical #MeToo fad, which, like the Cornell episode was weaponized by the Left for political gain. The hysteria got many sexual predators their just desserts, and also amassed many unjustly maligned male victims. I don’t know what happened at Cornell, but I do know that the case has already been co-opted by Democrats to inflame a core constituency, angry white progressive women convinced that the U.S. is an oppressive patriarchy that would have the culture emulating “A Handmaiden’s Tale” if it had its way. There’s an election approaching, after all. Hence the emergence of a mother who murdered her three children as the object of sympathy.
Here are what I consider salient facts based on what we do know:
At Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, 49-year-old condemned inmate Christa Pike got two full doses of pentobarbital when one was supposed be sufficient to kill her. The second was administered into her bloodstream after the first didn’t work, following state protocols. But she still maintained a distinct heartbeat, and began snoring.
There were no rules in Tennessee for what should happen when a prisoner survives both lethal injections, because it’s not supposed to happen and had never happened before.
The microphones were shut off and viewing curtains were drawn. Attending medical staff then entered the execution chamber to evaluate vital signals, confirm the presence of a heartbeat, and determine whether there as acute respiratory distress. Defense attorneys recorded the information to file an emergency motion with a federal court citing evidence that their client survived and suffered unconstitutional pain, citing the 8th Amendment against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Pike was disconnected from the IV lines, her condition stabilized, and she was transferred by secure transport to an off-site civilian medical facility.
I must confess, because I have watched way too much TV, a Western I must have seen when I was about 10 had me believing that when a condemned prisoner survives an execution, such as a hanging, the prisoner is deemed to have completed his sentence and goes free. My father had confirmed this, saying that the real punishment in capital cases was the waiting and anticipation. The dying part was a breeze, or was supposed to be. (Last words of British acting legend, 19th-century actor Edmund Kean: “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”)
Well, that legend is not true; that has never been the case in the U.S., and it has rarely been the practice anywhere. Wikipedia has a just-updated list of botched executions going back to 1540. It’s a long (and probably incomplete) list, but there are only two examples where the condemned was set free, and only three where the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, none since 1885.
That last lucky guy was John Henry George “Babbacombe” Lee (1864 –1945), an Englishman famous for surviving three attempts to hang him in 1885. He had been convicted of murder. Lee was eventually released and supported himself by touring and speaking about his strange life. There have been several books about Lee including “The Man They Could Not Hang” (Holgate and Waugh, 2005) and a silent film. He’s buried at Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee.
So that’s what happens when you survive an execution. You end up in Milwaukee….
But I digress. The issue at hand is what is the ethical, fair and responsible way to handle such situations.
Westlaw describes judicial estoppel thusly (readers here at EA are familiar with the principle of ethics estoppel):
A common law doctrine that prevents a party from taking a position that is contrary to a position the party took in an earlier legal proceeding. The purpose of judicial estoppel is to protect the integrity of the judicial process by preventing a party from gaining an unfair advantage or imposing an unfair detriment on the opposing party in a later proceeding. A court will typically invoke judicial estoppel where the earlier position was accepted by the court and the later position is clearly contradictory.
Trial practice is not my wheelhouse, but if the latest questionable strategy of Lindsay Clancy’s loose cannon defense attorney doesn’t warrant the infliction of judicial estoppel, I don’t know what would.
After spending the entire six-week triple-murder trial of the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three young children (above) arguing that Clancy was legally insane and not responsible for her actions, Kevin Reddington argued in a hearing yesterday,”What actions?”
“Where is the evidence that she did this?” Reddington asked the same judge who presided over the mistrial. The attorney claimed that the DNA and fingerprint evidence were “woefully deficient,” that the prosecution’s timeline was “ridiculous,” and the police investigation was inadequate.
Of course, his client did send her husband out on an errand from which he returned an hour later to find his children strangled. She did confess to the murders; she had been behaving erratically and was under treatment, and there is no plausible explanation for the kids death-by-exercise bands other than the fact that their mother did it. “In this case, there was no investigation. They just immediately assumed that this woman was guilty,” Reddington said.
Gee, I wonder why.
In the first trial, Reddington didn’t dispute the charges in any way, and conceded that his client was the killer. The attorney blames the judge, arguing that the fact that Judge Sullivan denied his request to bifurcate the trial, Part I to decide whether she was guilty of murder and Part II to determine if she was if she was not guilty by reason of insanity, put him in a “conundrum” of having to admit she carried out the crimes in order to put forth the insanity defense. That’s why he argued in the first trial that his client had been in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis when she snapped after she had imagined a voice commanding her to kill the children and herself.
Nice try, Counselor. The Hail Mary strategy isn’t unethical; it’s just zealous representation. No lawyers consulted about the hearing think Reddington’s gambit is going to work. The judge is not going to dismiss the case. If there is another trial, and there had better be, will he argue this time that she didn’t murder her children and then attempt suicide? What will be the theory, that a maniac somehow got into the house, killed the kids without leaving any sign he had been there, that Clancy tried to kill herself in her grief and trauma and now can’t remember the attack? Or will he try the insanity defense again?
I suspect that Reddington knows the next jury won’t be packed with women who see Clancy as a victim of a patriarchal society that forces women to bear children they don’t want, and that her prospects of being acquitted are dimming. Stay tuned.
With this post, I am belatedly adding “Ethics Villain” to the Ethics Alarms categories. I should have done it before: frankly, properly adding categories and tags to each post after I have finished it is a chore, and I often wonder whether it is worth my time. I’ve posted around 20,000 essays, and the tagging and categorizing process takes about 3 minutes, which means I have spent 5 days worth of waking hours doing it already with no end in sight. I could really use those 60 hours right now.
Anyway, back to Ethics Villain: I have used the term to indicate sort of a super-Ethics Dunce, but that that’s not quite right. Ethics Villains are more like ficks, the EA designation for the people who know what they are doing is wrong and shamelessly do it anyway. In March, I posted an incomplete inventory of Ethics Villains, leaving off Dr. Fauci, who was properly branded with the designation later. Upon reflection, the list was very incomplete, omitting, for example, both Clintons and Barack Obama.
It did include “Virginia Democrats,” however, and that’s from whence today’s Ethics Villain oozed.
***
Local news reports here in Virginia and newly released transcripts from a House July deposition reveal that Arlington’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Taftiac admitted that her office follows a policy in which a DUI charge may be reduced to a different Class 1 misdemeanor when the drunk driver holds DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status. After all, these drunks are special: they are “good illegal immigrants” who face severe immigration penalties for serious law-breaking in addition to the penalties for drunk driving. An office memo urges prosecutors to consider lesser charges when a DACA recipient is arrested for endangering legal, law-abiding citizen drivers and their families as well as pedestrians who looked both ways and waited for “WALK” before crossing a street in what they assumed would be a safe crosswalk. Hey, all they want is a better life!
Can’t do that!
“Journalists” from MSNOW, CNN and Politico had their access to the White House grounds denied today, after President Donald Trump said on social media that he had banned the news outlets over what he called their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”
He’s not wrong. And MSNOW, CNN and Politico are not by any stretch of the imagination the “independent” news organizations they say they are, or even genuine journalists, since it is remarkably obvious that they are really “Democratic Party surrogates with press credentials,” as one wag accurately describes them. And they are, as the President stated in one of his most audacious, bold and correct assessments, “enemies of the people.”
It is also true that as pivotal mid-terms approach, those three outlets and many others are throwing a major portion of the weight of the news media into spinning, concealing, misrepresenting and and prioritizing news stories in the manner most likely to push votes to Democrats and Socialist/Communists, not based on facts, law, common sense, logic or the best interests of the nation, but based on an ideological agenda.
Never mind. Trump’s actions here are futile, and I assume he knows it; if he doesn’t, then he has a bunch of lawyers to fire. He’s doing this to focus attention on the Axis news media’s unethical and corrosive efforts to manipulate elections, as it did in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Yes, it’s unethical for a President to deliberately violate the Constitution knowing that his actions will be struck down. It’s also unethical for journalists to use First Amendment protections to abuse their power and undermine democracy, but there is nothing in the Constitution that stops them from doing it
“The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” MS NOW said in a statement posted on X. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalists in our democracy,” it added. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.
Yada yada. That’s all the right rhetoric. Too bad it’s such a scumbag organization using it.
“We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hinderance or interference from the government and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right,” CNN said in a statement posted on X. “We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account, and we will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear or favor,” the statement added.
Of course, CNN made virtually no effort to hold the Obama and Biden administrations “to account,” but were, instead, complicit in their unconstitutional behavior. The Constitution, however, doesn’t say what biased and unethical news organizations can’t do, just what the government can’t do to them.
Politico Press, the publication’s communications team, said that “POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them.”
The funny word in that statement is “continue.”
Nevertheless, President Trump doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, making the metaphorical ethical leg mighty weak as well.
Too bad.
The Big Apple’s Communist, anti-Semitic Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week (yes, that kind of intro is called “poisoning the well,” and I don’t care) announced that the first two high-tech modular bathrooms (of 17) that the city ordered earlier this year from Throne Labs are now on city streets. The rest of the restrooms will come online soon.
Wait, what? How does a bathroom come “online” ? This is how: The new public toilets can only be accessed by texting a number via a smartphone or by using special tap cards, which will be distributed by non-profit organizations in the community. There is strict 10-minute time limit on the things. A speaker inside the room will announce via bot that pooping-time is running out. Next the desperate user will hear in English and Spanish, “Attention: Your use time has expired! The door is opening now!” Then the door will slide open, exposing the user to the world. If someone doesn’t vacate the robo-bathroom at that point, Throne Labs personnel will get an alert to investigate, and if, necessary, call the police.
This system is allegedly necessary because NYC, which no longer observes the “broken window theory” and will not arrest someone for relieving themselves in public, decided that the public urination problem was becoming…serious. But how many public pissers have smart phones?
When I told a friend about this innovation today, he said, “There’s got to be something unethical about that.“
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Ethics Observations:
1. These people cheat. They are proud of their cheating: it’s “the ends justifies the means” exemplified. This is a law school dean—at a prestige law school!— openly admitting and rationalizing violating the law.
2. He also says that he’ll lie under oath to deny what he said.
3.Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has a long and disgusting EA dossier (at the link) but is always—always, no exceptions—represented in the mainstream media as respected legal scholar. I don’t respect him: he’s an Ethics Villain, and undeniably so.
4. Notice that he says “diversity is important” but he never says why it’s important. This is just an article of faith with the Left. It is important because it just is, that’s all, and they say it is, so there.
5. I’m playing the Learned Judge tonight in a law school production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury” (1875, and as funny and sharp now as it was on opening night.) The Foreman of the Jury, a bass-baritone role, is being played by tiny female student, a soprano, who is inaudible and who can’t remember her entrances. She is easily the least able member of the chorus. Why was she cast in that role? She is the only “student of color” who auditioned, and the student organization has by-laws requiring “diversity” in casts. As a result, the show sounds worse, looks worse, all of the cast members who are qualified for their roles will get fewer benefits from their work and dedication as a result, the audience will enjoy the show less, and the exploited student, who is a very nice young woman, will be embarrassed in public. If I had to describe a perfect example of what’s wrong with DEI logic, I doubt that I could come up with a better one. Yet ideologues like Chemerinsky still use their authority to assure the world that discriminating against white males in pursuit of diversity is an “unalloyed virtue, as Gilbert might say.
6. Our cast—all of them (but me!) list their “pronouns” in their program bios— had a rehearsal in the faculty lounge. There are only two newspapers there for faculty perusal: The New York Times and the Washington Post. Nah, U.S. law schools aren’t Leftist indoctrination centers! What a ridiculous conspiracy theory…
7. Do let me know if any Axis news media outlet breathes a word of this incident. My bet: there won’t be any.
