Law & Law Enforcement

Ethics Dunce, Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Division: Mansfield Frazier

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

"Do the right thing, George. Or else."

Mansfield Frazier, whose name I was blissfully unaware of until I read his astounding opinion piece in The Daily Beast, thinks that in order to prevent another set of deadly riots along the lines of what occurred when the police who beat Rodney King were acquitted, George Zimmerman should be persuaded to accept a prison sentence without a trial by jury of his own. “The time is now for strong hands to take the helm and steady the ship of state—not to mention our national racial, political and legal discourse. The paramount concern has to be to avert a large-scale racial calamity.” he writes.

No, the paramount concern is for the justice system to give George Zimmerman the same due process of law, same fair trial, same guaranteed legal defense and same right to a trial before his peers as any other citizen accused of an alleged crime that has not been used to fan racial hate and suspicion on MSNBC. Those concerned about potential race riots should look to the people who irresponsibly lit the fuse to ignite them, and order them to snuff out the flame. Those concerned should observe the actions of the Florida prosecutors, who have given every indication that they either have no valid case or are incapable of presenting one. They should seek to discipline a national news media that has misinformed the public about the case, stating that there were elements of racism and profiling in Trayvon Martin’s death when the evidence so far firmly establishes neither. It is not George Zimmerman’s responsibility to sacrifice his freedom to prevent a social calamity that was not and will not be of his making. Continue reading →

A Last Word on the Kevin Coffay Sentence

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Keven Coffay, the teen who drove drunk, killed three of his friends as a result and fled the wreck as they lay trapped and dying, has prevailed in his effort to get the original 20 year prison sentence (for involuntary manslaughter) reduced. Now he may be released as early as next spring, on parole from his new, lenient, 8 year sentence. I won’t re-iterate my views on Coffay’s case, which are already here and here. I will make this additional observation.

In his column today, George Will discusses the science behind the growing consensus that life sentences without the chance of parole qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the 8th Amendment. I don’t disagree with his conclusion, nor do I doubt, as the father of a teen-age son, that the brain chemistry of teens dictate special calculations and analysis when trying to decide on what is just punishment for crimes arising from the recklessness and poor judgment of adolescents as opposed to adults. Continue reading →

An Unethical and Stupid Blue Line

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Officer Tasca, defying a police taboo

Police have a hard, crucial and dangerous job, so it is not surprising that the profession has developed a culture of rigidly enforced mutual support, the famous “blue line” that represents order against chaos, with police protecting society from the lawless and the predators, and making solidarity among the components of that line a key element in its strength. I understand why the culture has evolved to be what it is, and why an ethic of unconditional loyalty and trust thrives in police departments. There are times. however, when enforcing the integrity of the blue line serves to undermine it, and the saga of Officer Regina Tasca of the Bogota (New York) Police Department appears to be one of them. Continue reading →

The Kevin Coffay Tragedy Revisited: Not Vengeance…Survival

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Kevin Coffay took the wheel with four of his teenaged friends as passengers. All four were drunk, and by the end of the evening only Coffay and another were alive, three young people having perished when Coffay’s intoxicated driving caused the car to go airborn into a bloody crash. He was convicted by a Montgomery County (Maryland) court of involuntary manslaughter in January and sentenced to 20 years, not in small part because he had fled the scene of the accident, running and hiding in the woods as his friends bled and died in the wreck.

Today he is in court arguing, through his lawyers, that his sentence is too long. I didn’t think it was too long when I first wrote about the tragedy in January, but after reading his arguments and those of his defenders, I have come to believe that the sentence may not be long enough. Continue reading →

In Brooklyn, Another Nightmare Prosecution

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Prosecutors intentionally robbed Darrell Dula of a year out of his life. What should happen to them?

We continue Unethical Prosecutors Week with this jaw-dropping horror story from Brooklyn, New York.

In June 0f 2011, the accusations of a 22-year-old prostitute led to Damien Crooks and Jamali Brockett being arrested on charges of forcing the woman  into prostitution when she was a 13-year-old girl, and then raping, assaulting and sexually trafficking her for the next 8 years. She also accused  Jawara Brockett and Darrell Dula of raping her. They were also arrested and charged.

The day after she fingered Brockett and Dula, however, the 22-year-old prostitute confessed to detectives that she concocted the accusations against them.  “I once again asked [her] if she was raped,” a detective wrote in a police report after the interview. “She told me ‘no’…”   Then she signed a recantation.

Never mind. Even though they knew a conviction would be impossible after the alleged victim and accuser had recanted her own account, prosecutors continued to pursue the case. Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Update: The Special Prosecutor Buys a Ticket!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Don’t tell me Angela Corey is unethical too! Hey…I told you not to tell me!

Here, almost in its entirety, is noted legal ethicist Monroe Freedman’s post on the The Legal Ethics Forum, regarding Special Prosecutor Angela Corey’s outrageously unethical press conference. I was going to post on this myself, but I could not improve on Prof. Freedman, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his career and contributions to legal ethics theory. His title was “Trayvon Martin, Angela Corey, and Prosecutors’ Ethics.”  When I read it, the only thing I could say was “Bingo!”  From here on, it is all Monroe:

“Special Prosecutor Angela Corey used her press conference to establish three things.

“First, her investigative team… “worked tirelessly” in a “never-ending search for the truth and a quest to always do the right thing for the right reason.”  We are “not only ministers of justice,” we are “seekers of the truth,” and we “stay true to that mission.” Continue reading →

The Criminal Justice Ethics Breakdown: Unforgivable, Incomprehensible, and Horrifying

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

"Yeah, that's bad, but can you believe those gas prices?"

There is no longer any way for the defenders of the criminal justice system, or indeed American democracy and its ideals, to deny that thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of Americans languish in prison for crimes they did not commit. This fact is so terrible in its implications for the nation, the system, the public and the legal profession that I feel incapable of grasping it all, still, though this has been slowly dawning on me for a long time. Right now, it is all I can manage to escape denial, for the deprivation of so many innocent people of their liberty is my responsibility, as well as yours, and that of everyone else. Even in the midst of serious policy debates over so much else that is vital to our future, how can anyone argue that this isn’t the highest priority of all?

Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed that

“Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled. Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week, Trayvon Martin Ethics Train Wreck Division: Dr. Boyce Watkins

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“Sybrina’s words have opened the door for millions of people to understand when George Zimmerman is let off the hook with either an acquittal or a plea bargain for a lesser charge.”

—Syracuse University Professor Boyce Watkins, in a blog post complaining that the comments of Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother stating that she thought the shooting of her son was “an accident” were devastating to the chances of convicting George Zimmerman of second degree murder.

Unmasked at last!

I must confess, I love this quote and the post that generated it. I love it because a race-baiting scholar who later defenders cannot credibly claim didn’t write what he meant, has confirmed what I have argued in multiple posts, in the course of also validating my assessment that Fulton’s comment was itself unethical, though not for the reasons Dr. Watkins objects to it.

In the rest of his post, Watkins confirms my assessment of Fulton’s irresponsible and despicable willingness to stir up hate toward Zimmerman. Continue reading →

T-shirt Ethics and Bigotry In Lexington, Kentucky

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

The offensive T-shirt design. Honest.

Hands On Originals is a T-shirt company in Lexington, Kentucky that is now under fire for refusing the business of the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization, which organizes Lexington’s annual gay pride festival every June. The organization wanted to print up some T-shirts, and the company told them to take their business somewhere else. The reason: the T-shirt company is a “Christian organization”, and the owners don’t want to assist in promoting a message that goes against their religious beliefs.

The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization filed a complaint, and now there will be an investigation to decide whether this violates Lexington’s Fairness Act, which protects people and organizations from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Lexington’s mayor has weighed in against Hands On, and boycotts against the company and the closely related company Wildcat Wearhouse have been threatened. Meanwhile the attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the T-shirt company, argues that “No business owner should be forced to violate his conscience simply because someone demands it. The Constitution absolutely supports the rights of business owners to decline a request to support a message that conflicts with their deeply held convictions.”

I am not going to comment on the legal and constitutional issues, but the ethical issue is clear. Should society respect the choice of a business to refuse to provide products or services to groups, individuals or causes it opposes or objects to on moral or religious grounds? Continue reading →

Unethical Ethics: How Business and Government Encourage Unethical Thinking In Their Ethics Training

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Show us the way, O Wise and Ethical One!

Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist turned federal prisoner, then author and now ethics expert, will be giving a lecture on government and personal ethics at The University of Texas at Austin’s business school on May 2. This is not as unusual as it seems. My biggest competitors are felons and disbarred lawyers—they literally step right out of professional disgrace, and sometimes jail, into the lecture circuit. They are draws, and in a field like ethics, which is often prescribed as substitute for barbiturates, this is irresistible to professional development programmers and conference organizers. It also attracts the participants that most need real ethics training, but who seek what these fake ethics presenter usually have to offer:  real life-based advice on what you can’t get away with. This lesson has about as much to do with ethics as it does with Parcheesi, but unfortunately, that’s what is generally regarded as practical ethics.

Characters like Abramoff don’t have ethics alarms; they have survival alarms.  Business schools, politicians and the media still believe that aiming reforms at those alarms, in the form of tougher rules and enforcement, will make business and government more ethical. Think about it: the cultures will still be unethical; the people in them will be just as unethical, but because proven scofflaws and ethics corrupters like  Jack Abramoff will explain where they went wrong, all these people with dead ethics alarms, further deadened by absorbing  the wisdom of the most corrupt of a corrupt breed, will stop behaving unethically.

Good plan. Continue reading →