Law & Law Enforcement

Introducing “The Marmion Award” and Its 2012 Honorees, Lavera Irene Hammond-Jackson and Stella Hammond-Jackson

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Don't be so gloomy, Sir Walter! Here, let me cheer you up by telling you about the tangled web woven by the

Don’t be so gloomy, Sir Walter! Here, let me cheer you up by telling you about the tangled web woven by the Hammond-Jacksons!

I may never award this particular prize again, but a spectacular episode of incompetent mendacity like this needs to be immortalized. The Marmion Award is named in honor of “Marmion,” the long epic poem by novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). The work is best known for its lines:

Oh! what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive!

A Palmer too! No wonder why.

I felt rebuked beneath his eye.

I don’t know what Palmer has to do with it, but the reasons for the award will be immediately apparent when one reads the hilarious and deadpan Oconee County Sheriff’s Office account of the shoplifting arrest of a mother-daughter team at a Walmart’s in Oconee County, South Carolina. While it is refreshing, in an era when so many teens are estranged from their parents and reject their values, to see a mother and daughter so close in interests and ambitions, I cannot help reflect on how the daughter in this case never had a fighting chance to join the ranks of honest, respectable, productive members of society, since her mother has obviously raised her to be a shameless thief and a liar, and by the evidence of this report, succeeded in her goal. The report also shows, unfortunately, that a proud mentor’s offspring is unlikely to become a convincing liar if her mother and teacher is this inept at it herself.

Here is the report, reprinted in the Oconee Patch. I want to thank the patch, Fark, which flagged it, the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office, which preserved it for posterity, and especially the Hammond-Jacksons for giving me, in my depressed holiday state, the best laugh I’ve had in a long, long time.  Continue reading →

Hey Corey Clark, This Streisand Effect’s For You!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Remember Corey Clark? Neither do I.

Remember Corey Clark? Neither do I.

For those of you fortunate enough to have forgotten about Corey Clark: he had a brief fling with celebrity after he was kicked off American Idol in 2003 and later accused then-Idol judge Paula Abdul of secretly helping him advance in the show while they were having a clandestine, and obviously unethical, sexual relationship. He did this, class act that he is, two years later while he was promoting an album release.

I didn’t remember Corey Clark either, until a typical reputation-cleaner (that is, dishonest and threatening) called me on the phone yesterday, misrepresenting himself as working for Clark’s lawyer, and told me that Clark was engaged in litigation regarding “defamatory” material published about him. He said that a post on Ethics Alarms’ predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard, had “defamed” Clark in 2005 by stating that he had been convicted of a felony, and this was a demand that I either retract that post or take it down.

This, is, of course, approaching the patented territory of Ken at Popehat, whose specialty is opposing creeps who try to censor opinion on the internet by threatening spurious but expensive litigation against bloggers. As I told Clark’s paid lackey, who spouted erroneous legal theories and had a rudimentary understanding of defamation at best, I was only recounting what I had read in published reports at the time. There could be no defamation, as 1) Clark was, at the time, a public figure, 2) I wrote what I thought was true and accurate and 3) there was no malice involved. He asked me for my source, prompting me to say that I would have been able to supply him with one and would have done so gladly if his employer’s client hadn’t waited seven years to bring the post to my attention. The Scoreboard has not been active since 2009. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Murderer On The Sidelines

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
Support the man, not the drunk-driving killer, who also happened to BE the man. Right?

Support the man, not the drunk-driving killer, who also happened to BE the man. Right?

Eight days after he was locked up for manslaughter as a result of being drunk at the wheel in a car accident that took the life of a team mate, Dallas Cowboys player Josh Brent was allowed on the sidelines with his team during its game against the Philadelphia Eagles.  Brent’s teammates had requested that he be present to show their support, and apparently this had the blessing of Jerry Brown’s mother, whose deceased son was the victim in the crash.

ESPN commentator Dan Graziano took to his keyboard to pronounce the Cowboys public embrace of a player charged with killing someone while driving drunk misguided and wrong: Continue reading →

Musings On A Judge’s “One Time Accidental Mistake”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
"All right now, boys---smile!"

“All right now, boys—smile!”

From the ABA Journal:

“A Philadelphia traffic court judge has been removed from the bench for showing a female court clerk photos of his privates. In a one-sentence ruling on Thursday, the Court of Judicial Discipline took action for what it called judicial misconduct. However, a lawyer for former judge Willie Singletary called the incident a ‘one-time accidental mistake’ and said the judge had resigned from office in February…According to attorney John Summers, the judge accidentally displayed photos of his genitals for a period of seconds and he and the court clerk were sharing innocuous cellphone content with each other. A legal ethics complaint contended the judge also asked her ‘Do you like it?’ at the time.”

Some thoughts: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote, Conduct and Organization: The Hacking Collective Called “Anonymous,” No Matter How Despicable Its Targets Are

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
I think the missing heads explain a LOT

I think the missing heads explain a LOT

I considered making Anonymous the subject of an ethics quiz, but there isn’t any genuine ethics question about the group that an ethical 7th grader shouldn’t be able to answer while playing a videogame.

It is an arrogant and  lawless group of vigilantes, and nobody ought to be confused into admiring it or applauding its actions because Anonymous has chosen adversaries even more revolting than it is. The fact that Anonymous is currently tormenting the Westboro Baptist Church, those homophobic religious fanatics who think harassing family members of fallen soldiers at funerals is a reasonable method of proclaiming  opposition to homosexuality, certainly triggers a positive response on the Cognitive Dissonance Scale, but that is visceral, not rational. Citizens do not forfeit their rights because you don’t approve of their conduct, even if their conduct is objectively offensive.

First, the unethical quote, from an email sent to a website by a representative:

“Just hacked Westboro’s site. Freedom of speech is one thing. But freedom to hate is another. A domain such as “godhatesfags.com should not exist despite rumblings of members picketing Sandy Hook. Those families have enough anguish to deal with.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

militia

I don’t agree with everything in Michael’s  take-down of a comment by Eric R. to my post, “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post,” but as an example of the genre ( mastered on Ethics Alarms by the 2011 Commenter of the Year tgt and others), it’s a gem. The main point, that the Second Amendment has significant symbolic value as a right that reminds the government that the citizens of a democracy will not bare their throats to central power, is a crucial one, which I touched on in an earlier Ethics Alarms post. An armed insurrection against the government would be a catastrophe, of course. Still, while those Americans who believe that arming citizens against possible government tyranny trust too little, the citizens who argue that the government should be able to disarm the populace in the name of safety trust far too much.

I did remove one small non-substantive part of the post, because I really dislike mockery as a device on Ethics Alarms (the unedited comment is still under the original post.) I particularly think Michael’s identification of the reasons underlying the recent spate of mad dog killings is seriously off the mark. My own list, in order of influence would be…

  1. The difficulty of getting seriously disturbed individuals institutionalized, and the lack of places to keep and treat them.
  2. The availability of assault-type weapons to such disturbed individuals.
  3. The failure to enforce existing gun regulations
  4. The increasing difficulty and complexity of life generally, making it harder for those who are poor, poorly trained, not especially bright, or emotionally fragile to compete and succeed.
  5. The pervasive media, which creates false norms of success and happiness that are unachievable for most Americans.
  6. The culture of guns and violence, which is intensified by the entertainment media, but which is also a core American characteristic that isn’t going away.
  7. The publicity given to mass murderers by the news media.

But I digress.

Here is Michael’s tough Comment of the Day, to the post “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post”. The bold sections below are quotes from Eric’s comment: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

“When will America choose to protect children instead of guns?”

—- The headline writer for the Washington Post, introducing columnist Petula Dvorak’s column this morning on the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shooting, which took the lives of 26, including 20 children.

Newtown shooting

Presumably the Post’s headline writer was inspired to come up with that headline by the similar statement from Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, who was quoted in Dvorak’s essay. Edelman said,

“This latest terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is no fluke. It is a result of the senseless, immoral neglect of all of us as a nation to fail to protect children instead of guns and to speak out against the pervasive culture of violence. It is up to us to stop these preventable tragedies.”

This is not quite as irresponsible and dangerous as the Post’s headline, but it is close. The suggestion that greater safety and security compels and justifies abandoning the core rights that make the United States unique and free is the ticket to tyranny, benevolent or otherwise. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The ABA Journal

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
"I just know we're forgetting something! "Effects"? No, that's not it..."Ethanol"? No, no..."Prosthetics"? Arrrgh! What IS it?

“I just know we’re forgetting something! “Effects”? No, that’s not it…”Ethanol”? No, no…”Prosthetics”? Arrrgh! What IS it?”

This is as disheartening and it is shocking. The American Bar Association Journal, the monthly magazine of the nation’s largest lawyer organization and in many ways the face of the legal profession in the United States, just announced its 6th Annual Blawg 1oo, its reader-chosen list of the best law-related blogs on the web. There are many excellent blogs honored, of course; indeed all of them are useful or entertaining. I’ve visited most of them, and some, like Popehat, the Legal Professions Blog, Above the Law, the Volokh Conspiracy, Scotus Blog,  the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and Over-Lawyered, I check on several times a week. There is a remarkably wide range of blog topics covered, including superhero law, practicing law in China and zombies. Guess what’s not covered?

Legal ethics. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Michigan State Representative Doug Geiss (D-Taylor)

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments
Ah, those were the good old days!

Ah, those were the good old days!

There is a strong likelihood that the Michigan state legislature will pass “right to work” legislation that limits the political power of labor unions, preventing unions cannot from requiring members to pay dues as a condition of employment. Twenty-four states have such measures, all passed through the democratic process, with voter-elected representatives debating and approving the legislation, and bills being signed by duly elected governors.  State Rep. Doug Geiss (D-Taylor), however, a union-supporting legislator in Michigan, has a provocative alternative strategy to offer when debate and democracy fail to reach the result he and his supporters desire: threaten violence. Continue reading →

The 8 Useful Ethics Tips From “The Tale of the Well-Meaning Kidnapper”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Luis Trinidad, safe but confused

Luis Trinidad, safe but confused

Ethics Tip #1: If you are this stupid and irresponsible, it’s unethical to have children

A Bristol, Connecticut man parked his car outside a store with the doors unlocked, the motor running, and his two-year-old son in the back seat.

Ethics Tip #2: When you witness child endangerment, make sure rescuing the child does not require breaking the law, unless there are no other options to save the child. Calling the police is usually another option.

Outraged by the father’s irresponsible conduct, a citizen who happened to pass by the car, 24-year-old Devon Mills, decided to take matters into his own hands.

Ethics Tip #3: When you hear yourself saying, “This guy needs to be taught a lesson,” stop and think things through: that may be true, but you may not be the appropriate deliverer of the lesson, and the statement is an invitation to overstep one’s authority.

Mills decided that it would serve the father of the child and owner of the car right if he got scared out of his wits. Continue reading →