Law & Law Enforcement

Supreme Court Integrity and the Useless Times-CBS Poll

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

If you dislike these people,but haven’t read their actual opinions, don’t know their names and are basing your opinion on what other people say, I don’t care what you think, and neither should anyone else.

I suppose there may be could be some uses for the recent New York Times-CBS poll measuring public attitudes about the Supreme Court. It could be used to launch, for example, a discussion about how little the public understands about the Court and how it operates. It might prompt a discussion about the recklessness of the two parties, which regularly attack the integrity of the Court every time it arrives at a decision that one of them doesn’t like. It might even prompt a refresher course on what went on during the 2000 Florida vote recount, and why that case required the Supreme Court to play a unique role that had nothing to do with helping George Bush “steal the election.” All of these would require an unformed and responsible newsmedia. however, so what the poll is prompting instead  misleading debates among talking heads about what the Court needs to do differently.

The Supreme Court needs to do nothing at all differently. Continue reading →

Just What We Needed—An Ethically Clueless Prosecutor In The George Zimmerman Case

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The monkey wrench in the gears of justice is named “Angel Corey”

It was evident from her initial statement on the case, however, that an ethically clueless prosecutor is what we, and Florida, and George Zimmerman got when Angela Corey was chosen for the job. Prof. Alan Dershowitz made a quick and accurate diagnosis of her problem on cable TV, and it apparently prompted Corey, ethically clueless as she is, to settle the matter by leaving no doubt. Dershowitz reports that Corey was so enraged by his calling her unethical and incompetent affidavit of probable cause to indict Zimmerman for murder as unethical and incompetent as it was that she has threatened to sue him and Harvard University. Dershowitz reports:

“State Attorney Angela Corey, the prosecutor in the George Zimmerman case, recently called the Dean of Harvard Law School to complain about my criticism of some of her actions. She was transferred to the Office of Communications and proceeded to engage in a 40-minute rant, during which she threatened to sue Harvard Law School, to try to get me disciplined by the Bar Association and to file charges against me for libel and slander.

“She said that because I work for Harvard and am identified as a professor she had the right to sue Harvard. When the communications official explained to her that I have a right to express my opinion as “a matter of academic freedom,” and that Harvard has no control over what I say, she did not seem to understand….”

This incident indicates that Corey also does not seem to understand the First Amendment and the Constitution, which  is a serious, indeed fatal, handicap for a prosecutor. It turns out that this ridiculous conduct—-a prosecutor trying to intimidate pundits by threatening to sue a legal analyst and law professor for criticizing her handling of a high-profile case—wasn’t even an aberration for Corey. Reporter Ron Littlepage writes:

Last December when I wrote a column critical of how she handled the Cristian Fernandez case, she fired off a two-page, single-spaced letter on official state attorney letterhead hinting at lawsuits for libel.…Then there’s Corey’s spat with Sandy D’Alemberte.

D’Alemberte is a former president of the American Bar Association, a former president of Florida State University and a law professor — not too shabby in the legal credentials department. When Corey was appointed to head up the investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, D’Alemberte had this to say: “I cannot imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case. There is nothing in Angela Corey’s background that suits her for the task, and she cannot command the respect of people who care about justice.” Earlier, D’Alemberte had criticized Corey in the Fernandez case. The reaction then: A public records request from her office to FSU seeking all emails, text messages and phone messages involving D’Alemberte related to Fernandez….”

This is beyond unprofessional, and reaches a level of shocking incompetence, arrogance, abuse of power and stupidity.

But wait! There’s more!  Law professor William Jacobson makes the perceptive legal ethics observation that Corey has created a conflict of interest for herself that raises the question of whether she should be removed from the case. He writes:

“Will she conduct the prosecution in such a way as to achieve justice, or to set herself up for a personal lawsuit against Dershowitz and Harvard?….  By threatening suit against a critic in the middle of the case, Corey has put her own financial interests at stake in the outcome and conduct of the prosecution. Florida has adopted American Bar Association Standards of Criminal Justice Relating to Prosecution Function.  ABA Standard 3-1.3 Conflicts of Interest provides in pertinent part:

(f) A prosecutor should not permit his or her professional judgment or obligations to be affected by his or her own political, financial, business, property, or personal interests.

I don’t think the question of Angela Corey having to step down as prosecutor in the case should even get to Prof. Jacobson’s issue, however. Her conduct in threatening critics, as well as her unethical probable cause affidavit and her blatant alliance with Trayvon Martin’s parents, trumpeted in her unethical press conference, makes it screamingly obvious that she shouldn’t be a prosecutor in this or any other case.

I’ll leave the final word to Prof. Dershowitz:

“…Her beef was that I criticized her for filing a misleading affidavit that willfully omitted all information about the injuries Zimmerman had sustained during the “struggle” it described. She denied that she had any obligation to include in the affidavit truthful material that was favorable to the defense. She insisted that she is entitled to submit what, in effect, were half truths in an affidavit of probable cause, so long as she subsequently provides the defense with exculpatory evidence.

“She should go back to law school, where she will learn that it is never appropriate to submit an affidavit that contains a half truth, because a half truth is regarded by the law as a lie, and anyone who submits an affidavit swears to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth….The judge deciding whether there is probable cause to charge the defendant with second degree murder should not have been kept in the dark about physical evidence that is so critical to determining whether a homicide occurred, and if so, a homicide of what degree. By omitting this crucial evidence, Corey deliberately misled the court.

“…That’s not the way the system is supposed to work and that’s not the way prosecutors are supposed to act. That a prosecutor would hide behind the claim that she did not have an obligation to tell the whole truth until after the judge ruled on probable cause displays a kind of gamesmanship in which prosecutors should not engage…

“Even if Angela Corey’s actions were debatable, which I believe they were not, I certainly have the right, as a professor who has taught and practiced criminal law nearly 50 years, to express a contrary view. The idea that a prosecutor would threaten to sue someone who disagrees with her for libel and slander, to sue the university for which he works, and to try to get him disbarred, is the epitome of unprofessionalism.

“If Angela Corey doesn’t like the way freedom of expression operates in the United States, there are plenty of countries where truthful criticism of prosecutors and other government officials result in disbarment, defamation suits and even criminal charges.

“We do not want to become such a country.”

Indeed we don’t. But we seem to already be a country where a local incident is blown up into a racially-polarizing national event, with the assistance of race-hucksters, an inept and biased press, and irresponsible elected officials, including the President of the United States, who annoints the victim as his hypothetical offspring. Then, when the justice system is supposed to take over and sort out the facts and the law objectively, fairly and dispassionately, the case is placed in the hands of biased hack like Angela Corey.

That’s the kind of county we are, and that’s bad enough.

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Pointer: InstaPundit

Sources:

Graphic: Billerico

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

New York’s Stop and Frisk Ethical Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The problem with racial profiling is that it is wrong and unfair, but it works.

Crime rates, especially gun-related killings, have dropped precipitously in New York City since Mayor Bloomberg approved an aggressive “stop and frisk” policy.  Stop and frisk, where police are allowed to stop, question and pat down an individual whom the officer has reasonable suspicion may be involved in the commission of a crime, was approved by the Supreme Court long ago. The rub is that, as documented by the ACLU, New York cops seem to automatically find blacks (54%) and Hispanics (31%)  suspicious, as they account for 85% of those stopped. Bloomberg is under fire to ease up on the program, which he says demonstrably saves lives, even though the vast majority of those stopped and frisked are innocent. Bloomberg, using statistics derived from pre-policy shooting deaths and the numbers of illegal guns the frisks have discovered, told the press that 5,600 New Yorkers live today because of police suspicions. Continue reading →

Unappreciated Ethics Hero: Facebook? Oh, Yes!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Unlike more primitive methods of mind control, Facebook is painless!

I think perhaps we have not been giving Facebook its due, and now, as the social networking monster is still reeling from its botched IPO, is a good time to right that wrong. We’ve been looking so hard at Facebook’s privacy settings, dadta collection, layouts and pointless games that we’ve missed the most important feature of it—magic. Like Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, but  a really, really big one, Facebook magically persuades people to not only tell the truth about the rotten things they are doing (like going dancing or golfing after persuading an employer to pay them disability because they are permanently unable to work), will do (like planning, in advance of the hearing the evidence, to vote guilty on a jury) or did (we’re getting to that), but to tell it to millions of people, potentially, so that they get punished.  Facebook’s power to compel confessions causes users to post videos or photographs of themselves in the process of doing incriminating things, so they can be then used as evidence in court. You have to admit, this is a wonderful thing. I don’t know how Mark Zuckerberg and his pals figured out how to do it, or what book of spells they stumbled across at Harvard, but they have performed a boon for humanity, and we ought to stop giving them grief.

Take the case of Michael Ruse, a charming Brit standing trial, accused of helping a friend beat up his father using a baseball bat. Micheal’s trial was going well for him, until Facebook took over his mind, such as it is, and flooded it with virtue. Suddenly, he was sending out a the message to his friends—and everyone else, for it was a public message—that he thought he would “get away with it.” An anonymous observer of the post—it could have been Wonder Woman, come to think of it, or at least Linda Carter— printed it his incriminating words and brought them to the court’s attention.

Under the advice of his barrister, Ruse changed his plea to guilty. The judge was not impressed, telling Ruse, “You pleaded guilty part way through the trial only really because you were stupid enough to put on Facebook what amounted to a full confession.” Well, yes, but as usual, he’s not giving Facebook credit for its uncanny ability to compel the truth. (Ruse’s lawyer replied to the judge, “He needs help with regards to thinking skills.” Perhaps. )

Ruse was  sentenced to 46 weeks in jail, another example of justice through Facebook magic. But apparently Zuckerberg’s magic lasso isn’t finished with him yet, for after sentencing Ruse got back on his Facebook account and insulted the judge.

Thank you, Facebook!

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Pointer: Fark

Facts: Gawker

Graphic: Mind Control Blog

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Graduation Ethics: the Cheering Mom and the Jerk’s Advantage

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Stipulated: for police to arrest proud South Carolina mother Shannon Cooper for loudly cheering during her daughter’s high school graduation over the weekend  was excessive, unreasonable, and stupid.  The graduation crowd  had been asked to hold their cheering until all students’ names had been called, and warned relatives of the graduates that they would be removed from the facility if they disobeyed the rule. As some parents inevitably do at every graduation, Cooper ignored the reasonable request, but this time, the defiant parent paid a steep price. Police charged her with disorderly conduct and placed her in a detention center.

Let me also make this clear, however: Cooper behaved like a selfish jerk. She is being showered with sympathy now, cast as Innocent Parent Abused For Being Proud of Her Baby, but that’s not who she is. She is the theater audience member who ignores the request to turn off her cell phone, and disrupts the actors and the audience when it rings, and the movie audience member who chats loudly during the show. She is the pet owner who doesn’t clean up after her Great Dane at the dog park. She is the able-bodied shopper who parks in  a handicapped parking space to run into the store “for just a minute.” She is the person who breaks into line, who brings 30 items to the “15 items only” checkout station, who takes more than her share of free food at events. She is, in short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe reasonable rules apply to her, and who constantly challenges the rest of us to “make a big deal” out of relatively minor demonstrations of contempt for everyone she comes into contact with. Continue reading →

Watch Out, John Malkovich…You Can’t Trust Siri!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

NO, JOHN! SIRI’S A SPY!!!!!

Wired reports that IBM has banned Siri, iPhone’s voice-activated digital assistant, its headquarters network. Employees trying to use John Malkovich’s new friend will be foiled. Why? IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT’s Technology Review that the company worries that conversations with Siri might be stored somewhere. And indeed they are. Siri relays everything she hears to an Apple data center in Maiden, North Carolina. What happens to it then is anybody’s guess. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Peter, who is a physician, a libertarian, and one of my oldest friends (we met in the 6th grade) from Arlington, Massachusetts, generously responded to my request for his professional expertise and philosophical perspective regarding the New York City soda ban.  Here is his thoughtful response, the Comment of the Day, on the post The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban: 

“It has become a reflex response to answer adverse circumstances with more regulation. To a lawyer, there is always a law, or regulation for any and every misstep in human behavior. Of course, we forget that we cannot predict the unintended consequences, not even to mention reviewing the effects of the laws we pass to determine if they are even having the INTENDED effect. Somehow, we believe that it is appropriate to pass laws to deny other people’s freedoms due to the “discomfort” of whiny types who have the connections and persistence to keep whining until they can get someone to pass a law. The consequence of such legislation’s continued passage, at ever more confiscatory levels of our liberties, is that we are legislating our way into a police state, and the widespread acceptance of the idea that it’s OK to deny personal liberty because it makes someone else “uncomfortable.” Again, as RR so aptly pointed out, “the government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” And this goes for not just your personal assets, but your freedoms as well.

“That said, in this context, yes, drinking lots of sugary sodas will make you fat, smoking will kill you, too much alcohol will kill you, doing extreme sports can kill you, and so on. And as long as one’s decisions affect only himself, have at it. However, when you want me to pay, through my insurance premiums, and my taxes, for the consequences of your stupidity, you cede the sovereignty of your decision to others beside yourself. If you want to ride your motorcycle without a helmet, while drunk, sure, do it. Just don’t expect me to pay the costs of your head injury. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s a serious problem.”

“Something needs to be done.”

“This is a public health issue.”

The media defenses of New York Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial decision to ban the sale of large soft drink servings in New York City, and Bloomberg’s defense as well, set up a classic utilitarian argument for a government intrusion into personal choice and lifestyle. It is, simply, that the ends justify the means, and as we all know, sometimes they do.

Sometimes, however, those means sacrifice too much: lives, dignity, fairness, liberty, fun. Sometimes employing those means require crossing lines that have not been crossed before, opening the door to more and greater sacrifices that even advocates of the particular measure would find objectionable and wrong. This leads to the slippery slope dilemma, and invokes absolutism. Some things must never be considered as just means, no matter what the ends being sought may be. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of absolutism declared that it was always wrong to use human beings against their wills to solve problems, no matter how great the problems are. The Declaration of Independence holds that a human being’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must never be breached by government. Continue reading →

Executing an Insane Killer: a Cynical Ethics Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Let’s me get this straight: this is only a “macabre spectacle” if the guy strapped down to be poisoned isn’t crazy. Right?

In the case of Steven Staley, Texas has itself one of those periodic ethical/legal conundrums surrounding capital punishment that leave me feeling  cynical, puzzled, and worried that I am missing an important part of my compassion apparatus.

Staley’s problem, or his perhaps stroke of luck, is that he is a little more crazy now than he was when he committed the crimes that placed him on death row. In September 1989, Staley escaped from a Denver prison  and started robbing everything he encountered, looting nine businesses across four states. Finally he hit the Steak and Ale Restaurant in Tarrant County, Texas. Staley and his accomplices gathered the employees at gunpoint and forced the manager to hand over the contents of all the registers and the store safe. He then took the manager into the getaway car as a hostage, and executed him as Staley tried to elude the police. Continue reading →

Now Boarding the Trayvon Martin-Goerge Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck…George Zimmerman!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Well, why not?

It’s been running over him again and again since the beginning; he might as well buy a ticket!

Not so fast, George!

This epic ethics train wreck, which has already engulfed the news media, civil rights activists, defense attorneys, prosecutors, bloggers, pundits, members of Congress, Barney Frank, Spike Lee, the Congressional Black Caucus, President Obama, Martin’s mother, and maybe even you, just picked up George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman just had his bail revoked because he and his wife misled the court at the bail hearing, claiming they had minimal financial resources when in fact a fund for Zimmerman’s defense had already raked in $135,000. As a result, the original bail was set at a minimum level. Now Zimmerman has to turn himself in to authorities again, and whether he can get bail a second time is in doubt.

Lying to a judge is always stupid and wrong, but this instance is spectacularly so. Zimmerman’s account of what happened on the fateful night that he shot Trayvon Martin is likely to be a key aspect of his defense on second degree murder charges, and having the fact that he already lied to the court once in the case isn’t going to help his credibility with the jury. It doesn’t make him a murderer, of  course. It does make him less convincing when he denies that he is a murderer.

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Facts: Associated Press

Graphic: Now Public

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.