Law & Law Enforcement

Observations on the Eric Garner Non-Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

The New York Times, among others, reports that the Staten Island grand jury has brought no indictment in the Eric Garner case, in which a large African American man resisted arrest and was brought down by multiple cops, as one, Daniel Pantaleo, used a choke hold to restrain him. After saying that he couldn’t breathe, Garner, who was asthmatic, stopped breathing and died

Observations:

1. I haven’t seen all the evidence, and stipulate that there may be some good reason for the non-indictement that I am not aware of. That aside, however, it certainly seems like this case embodies many of the features that were not present in the death of Michael Brown but that the media and activist narrative attributed to it nonetheless. Garner’s case, in contrast, appears to demonstrate an unwillingness of the law enforcement and justice system to hold police officers accountable for the results of excessive force, even when the result is death.

2. Again, absent some significant evidence that has not been made public, I believe that the video of the fatal arrest, the fact that the choke hold tactic is prohibited by police department policy [ Note: I originally wrote that it was illegal; that was in error, and I apologize for the mistake], and the coroner’s verdict that Garner’s death was a homicide should have been sufficient to mandate the grand jury finding probable cause for at least a charge of negligent homicide.

3. This seems like a result worthy of protest. It is one more reason why activists continuing to use Brown’s death as a rallying point is foolish and wrong. For their purposes, it is a weak case. Garner’s is not. Continue reading →

KABOOM! Now I’m Satisfied That The U.S. Will Never Solve Its Debt Problem, Since It Takes This Long For Congress To STOP PAYING ENTITLEMENTS To NAZIS

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

exploding-head

I’m on the way to Cleveland. I guess I might as well leave my brains on the ceiling, where this story deposited them:

“The House on Tuesday passed legislation to terminate Social Security benefits for suspected Nazi war criminals. Passed 420-0, the bill was approved after an October Associated Press report found that dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals forced to leave the U.S. collected millions of dollars in federal benefits.”

On the plus side, See? We can have bi-partisan agreement in Congress!

On the other side: why do we need the Associated Press to point out to Congress that we’re giving millions of dollars to former Nazis to keep them supplied with fresh Zykon B? Why wasn’t this bill passed six years ago? Sixteen years ago? As long as President Obama thinks he can rule by fiat, where was the executive order directing the Treasury to stop paying non-resident Nazis Social Security?

You can read the original AP story here, which I was going to post on until it got lost in the shuffle.

File this one under “Incompetent Elected Officials,” or perhaps simply, “We’re doomed.”

New Link: Behavioral Legal Ethics Blog

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

One of these days I’m going to highlight some of the excellent websites and blogs among the Ethics Alarms links (to your left!), but for the moment I’m directing your attention to a new one: the Behavioral Legal Ethics Blog. The three professors who contribute to the blog describe it, accurately, like this:

“Behavioral Legal Ethics is a place for a wide-ranging discussion about the intersection between behavioral science, law and ethics.  The conversations will appeal to anyone interested in the ways in which empirical psychological research can inform questions about how legal institutions and practices encourage ethical behaviors in legal and non-legal actors.”

I had intended to add this superb blog to my links for some time. I confess that the fact that the current post quotes me did prompt me to finally act.

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Pointer: Legal Ethics Forum

 

MOST Ethical Column, Post Or Essay About The Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck: The New Republic’s John Judis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

stand-out-from-the-crowd

I can’t bring myself to declare a liberal senior editor of a progressive magazine an Ethics Hero simply for writing an objective analysis of the Darren Wilson grand jury decision because the vast majority of his ideological brethren are refusing to demonstrate similar integrity and disgracing themselves. Nevertheless, John Judis’s essay titled “The Ferguson Decision Was Not a ‘Miscarriage of Justice.’ Liberals Need to Accept That.” is a relief and a pleasure to read in its matter-of-fact recognition of reality.  He is an analyst with impeccable hard left credentials: his curriculum vitae suggests that he is a socialist. He does not, however, believe in twisting the truth and misleading the public to further a political agenda. There is hope.

Here are some highlights:

  • “The physical evidence ruled out that Wilson had shot Brown in the back while running away, as Brown’s companion Dorian Johnson initially had claimed. And it was not conclusive one way or the other on whether Brown had, after he turned around to face Wilson, tried to surrender. In all, the forensic evidence did not prove Wilson innocent of killing Brown when he was trying to surrender, but it also did not give the grand Jury “probable cause” to indict him on that basis. Other evidence may surface, but from what the grand jury learned, I think it did the right thing, and that it’s also unlikely—given this evidence—that the federal government, which must meet an even higher evidentiary standard, will choose to indict Wilson….”
  • “By suggesting that the grand jury did the right thing, I am not exonerating the Ferguson police department, or other police departments. Many police departments are more likely to arrest without good cause or shoot without sufficient provocation a young black male than anyone of another sex or race or ethnic group. If Wilson himself had been better trained, he would not have killed Brown….there are a host of reforms that need to be made to police departments as well as changes in the law. And it is worth holding demonstrations to demand these. But I am suggesting that liberals are wrong to characterize the grand jury decision as a “grave miscarriage of justice” or to demand, as Moveon.org has done, that the federal government “arrest and prosecute Officer Darren Wilson.” These kind of charges and petitions only serve to exacerbate racial tensions and to cloud the underlying issues….”

Someone should get him meetings with the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the St. Louis Rams. Maybe he could explain why continuing their “hands up” demonstrations makes them look foolish. I don’t agree with some of his conclusions, particularly his belief that Robert McCulloch should have recused himself in favor of a Special Prosecutor, which would have ensured a miscarriage of justice with a repeat of the George Zimmerman show trial. Compared to virtually all other commentary from left-leaning commentators, however, Judis is clear-eyed, candid and fair….and correct.

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Pointer: Newsbusters

Source: The New Republic

 

Contest Entry For Most Unethical Column, Post Or Essay About The Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck: Hip-Hop DJ Jay Smooth

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

It goes without saying that my efforts to avoid more Ferguson commentary is a failure. The race-baiters, grievance-mongers, police-haters and cynical Democratic-base-goosers are engaging in an orgy of self-righteousness, aided by an uncritical news media and encouraged by public sentimentality and ignorance. This is horrible for the rule of law, law enforcement, race relations and the nation, but to close our eyes and repress our gag reflexes, hoping it will go away, is cowardly and irresponsible. This stuff is dangerous, to be blunt. Lies always are, and public policy built on lies will always result in harm and distrust.

The onslaught is much more powerful than I expected: several member of the Congressional Black Caucus actually brought the false “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” rallying cry onto the House floor yesterday. Charlie Rangel is using the lawful shooting of Brown based not on race but on his conduct alone to re-open demands for slavery reparations.

In this context, I’m entering this video blog by John Randolph, a.k.a “Jay Smooth,” a popular and outspoken hip-hop DJ with pretenses of social relevance.  It is genuine mind-poison. “Smooth” is sure smooth: he’s articulate, facile, a good actor, attractive, and facts mean absolutely nothing to him. Here he spins a persuasive justification for the Ferguson riots based on a series of demonstrably false premises: garbage in, but insidiously persuasive garbage out, especially to his audience. It begins with an apparently popular tweet he made before the grand jury results came out, which said, “The fundamental danger of a non-indictment is not more riots, but more Darren Wilsons.” If Wilson was not indicted for lawfully protecting himself from a subject who attacked him, more police will protect themselves from attacking suspects? The tweet is cleverly misleading: it assumes, without stating, that a racist cop murdered a black youth, and the video blog proceeds accordingly from that assertion. The truth is that the danger of having an indictment would be to allow mob justice and vengeance to preempt due process and fairness. Not surprisingly, Smooth later reveals that he sent essentially the same dishonest tweet about the George Zimmerman trial. Continue reading →

Contest Entry For Most Unethical Column, Post Or Essay About The Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck: Vanity Fair and W. Kamau Bell

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Large, male, black...also irresponsible and dishonest.

Large, male, black…also irresponsible and dishonest.

My nominee for the contest: Vanity Fair’s “On Being a Black Male, Six Feet Four Inches Tall, in America in 2014” by comedian W. Kamau Bell.

Maybe Bell thinks the extra face-time on cable news this despicably deceitful essay gets him does enough for his career to justify adding to the false narrative about the Michael Brown shooting.  It isn’t. Nor is it worth the ignorance, hatred and fear he is sowing by intentionally misrepresenting what happened to Mike Brown as simply the natural consequence of his race, gender and size. Conduct had a lot to do with it too.

The article is really sinister, repeatedly comparing the author, who is about the same height as Brown was, to the slain teen, implying but never quite saying that Brown was killed simply because he was, in the author’s words, black, male, and large. Here’s a typical passage:

“I am afraid of the cops. Absolutely petrified of the cops. Now understand, I’ve never been arrested or held for questioning. I’ve never been told that I “fit the description.” But that doesn’t change a thing. I am afraid of cops the way that spiders are afraid of boots. You’re walking along, minding your own business, and SQUISH! You are dead.  Simply put, I am afraid of the cops because I am black. To raise the stakes even further, I am male. And to go all in on this pot of fear, I am six foot four, and weigh 250 pounds. Michael Brown, the unarmed Missouri 18-year-old shot dead by police this summer, was also six foot four. Depending on your perspective, I could be described as a “gentle giant,” the way that teachers described  Brown. Or I could be described as a “demon,” the way that Officer Darren Wilson described Michael Brown in his grand-jury testimony.”

He doesn’t exactly say that Brown was “walking along, minding his own business,” but that’s his intent, and he knows that’s what thousands have chosen to believe. He says that he, like Brown, could be described as a “gentle giant,’ but omits the detail that Brown was obviously not accurately described as “gentle.” If he were gentle, he would be alive. He also, being intentionally misleading, fails to mention that Wilson described Brown as looking like demon when the teen was attacking him.

Michael Brown wasn’t shot because he was large, black and male. He was shot because he attacked a police officer, twice, and because his size made that attack more legitimately threatening.  Because of his size and what he was doing with it, no reference to Brown’s color is necessary or relevant.

Bell’s perceptions of white reactions to a law-abiding, civil citizen because he happens to be a large black male  have added some useful perspective  to the national discussion of racial bias and police conduct, had he not chosen the path of using the topic to insinuate an innocent victim’s status for Michael Brown that does not comport with facts, slanders Darren Wilson, and fans the flames of ignorance and hate.

No responsible publication should publish something like this.

 

President Lincoln’s Misunderstood Ethics Crisis: The Great Sioux Uprising

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Dakota hanging

As part my so-far futile efforts to leave Ferguson in the rear view mirror, let’s revisit one of the Abraham Lincoln’s great ethical dilemmas during the Civil War, in which today’s date, December 1, was pivotal.

Minnesota’s Great Sioux Uprising, now usually called the Dakota-U.S. Conflict, was among the bloodiest Indian wars in the West, with hundreds of Native Americans, settlers and military casualties. The Sioux were defeated soundly, and the U.S. Army tried 303 Native Americans by military commission, finding them guilty of war crimes and sentencing them to death by hanging. Federal law required Presidential approval of the death sentences, and this was a problem Abraham Lincoln, the President at the time, did not need.

For it was 1862, and the Civil War was raging. This was a year full of Union defeats, indeed, disasters, like Fredericksburg, and both the war and Lincoln’s ability to lead it were in peril. Lincoln was also calculating all the political angles before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. On top of the burdens of war and politics, he was coping with personal tragedy: his young son Willy had died nine months earlier, and Mary Todd Lincoln was teetering on emotional collapse from grief.
Now he had to decide whether to allow the execution of more than 300 Indians convicted in trials that were no better than kangaroo courts. Few Americans were concerned about the fate of the Native Americans, but Lincoln, with all of his other worries, took on the task of reviewing the trial records. What he found was manifest injustice.  Continue reading →

Deval Patrick’s Indefensible, Terrifying Admission

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
Welcome to my nightmare...

Welcome to my nightmare…

It is 4:30 AM. I can’t sleep, and among the reasons are not, as you might think, the fact that my father died five years ago today and I miss him terribly, or that this is my birthday, and I am that much closer to my own death. No, the cause for my tossing in bed is that I read  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s comments on “Meet the Press” about the Michael Brown shooting (yes, those eleven Ferguson posts still weren’t enough) just before retiring, and they have been giving me nightmares.

What Patrick’s remarks suggest to me  is that this incident is quite literally driving Democrats, civil rights activists and African-Americans crazy, causing them to lose their grip on basic principles of ethics and democracy. Here is what Patrick said, in part, in his interview with Chuck Todd, who, incompetently, did not ask properly probing questions in response (falling over in a dead faint would have also been appropriate):

“Look, without knowing all the facts, of course I wanted to see an indictment. And mostly because I think a trial and the transparency of a trial would be good for the community. And because so many of us have the supposition that police officers are not going to be held accountable and not going to have to answer for the shooting of unarmed, young, black teenagers.”

I challenge any civil libertarian to defend this statement. Continue reading →

The Threatening Banana

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

First, the story:

In Mesa County, Colorado, Nathen Rolf Channing, 27, was arrested after he pointed a banana at police officers as if it were a gun.  He explained that he doing a “trial run” for YouTube video as a “funny joke.”

The two officers initially thought the banana was a gun after Nathan “drew the object in the same manner someone would draw a standard handgun from a concealed holster.”  According to the arrest affidavit, Mesa County deputies Joshua Bunch and Donald Love  feared for their lives after Nathan pointed “what appeared to be a yellow tube with a black center” at them. Both stated that they thought the fruit was a gun, and Love was preparing to fire when Nathan shouted “It’s a banana!”

A conviction could get Nathan three years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.

Now some observations:

1. Nathan is an idiot, and should be convicted. Just because an assault is silly doesn’t mean its not an assault. Police officers shouldn’t have to put up with gag threats on their lives. Continue reading →

Eleven Ferguson Ethics Posts In One!

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

APTOPIX Police Shooting Missouri

There are too many ethics topics for me to cover adequately as it is. This is frustrating. That the Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck is generating ethics issues on a daily, even hourly basis creates a professional dilemma for me. I don’t want to appear obsessed with this mess; I’m not. I am really quite sick of it, and sick as well—and depressed—by the relentless stream of emotional, incompetent, and toxic opinions issuing from the news media, well-meaning but ignorant friends, and in some cases, professionals who appear overwhelmed by confirmation bias. One of my father’s favorite lines was “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts,” and I doubt that I have ever seen commentary on an event so dominated by that state of mind. Except, perhaps, the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman fiasco.

Allow me, then, to indulge in this compromise, while I wait for the entries in the Ethics Alarm contest to find the most unethical article, essay or blog post about Ferguson. Here are eleven points about the current Ethics Train Wreck that I would devote full posts to if I had the time and we lived in a Hell where Ferguson was the only thing going on. I may write full posts on a few of them yet, but meanwhile, here are shorter summaries that I hope you can use to enlighten some of your friends, relatives and associates afflicted with jerking knees….

1. We keep hearing that Officer Wilson is suspect and not credible because he expresses no remorse, and seems “cold.” This attitude projects the critics’ unjustified conclusions onto Brown, who doesn’t share them and shouldn’t. Why don’t interviewers point this out? If Brown was killed in self-defense, prompted by his own threats to the officer, Wilson shouldn’t be remorseful. Remorse means “deep regret or guilt for a wrong committed.” Wilson only did wrong if he shouldn’t have shot Brown, which is the assumption—an evidence-free assumption—of those who want him tried for murder. As for “cold”: Wilson’s whole life has been turned upside-down because a community and a substantial part of the nation have decided to make him pay the price for insensitive and poorly run police departments over decades and across the country. People are calling him a murderer based on political agendas. He’s supposed to respond to that warmly?

2. On ABC this morning, Jelani Cobb, a professor of African-American studies—and boy, are we learning a lot about the racist biases of that area of scholarship lately—pronounced the testimony of Wilson “fantastical” based on this statement: Continue reading →