Law & Law Enforcement

Ethics Quiz: Who is the Most Incompetent Elected Official—the DA Who Doesn’t Care If A Convicted Prisoner Is Really Guilty, Or The Assemblywoman Who Doesn’t Know About The First Amendment?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

California Assemblywoman Fiona Ma. " First Amendment? Where the heck did THAT come from?"

For this weekend’s Ethics Alarms quiz—the blog’s 2000th post!—I am asking readers to help me determine the Incompetent Official of the Week, when two unusually qualified candidates are running neck and neck.

Candidate A is McLennan County (Texas) District Attorney Abel Reyna:  Defense attorney Walter M. Reaves has filed a motion asking for DNA testing as part of his efforts to exonerate Anthony Melendez, currently serving a life sentence for the 1982 slayings of three teenagers in Waco.  Reaves says the test is needed because DNA analysis was not available when Melendez was convicted, and Melendez still maintains that he is innocent. D.A. Reyna, however, opposes the test. Why? He argues that such testing shows a lack of faith and support of the jury system, and what the jury has decided usually ought to be free of such post-trial attempts to discredit the verdict.

In other words, the D.A. believes that it is better to honor the jury system by letting an incorrect verdict stand than to use newly available scientific evidence to set an innocent man free.  Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Veteran commenter Tim LeVier updates an older Ethics Alarms post about the ethics and law regarding the practice of flashing headlights at oncoming cars on the highway to warn them of speed traps. Police had been ticketing the flashers; I said that this was wrong, there being no law against the practice, but that warning law-breakers of a police presence was poor citizenship and unethical nonetheless.

I still feel that way, but insufficiently considered other reasons, ethical ones, that might prompt the same conduct. Tim, while pointing us to a more recent story on the topic, remedies my failure….as he has before. As usual, I am grateful.

Here is his Comment of the Day on Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!:

“…A couple of points: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Innovative Legal Marketing

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Would "Seinfeld's" Jackie Chiles be a worse spokeperson for lawyers than Arnie Becker? Hmmmm...

L.A. Law’ Actor Corbin Bernsen, whom we originally got to know as priapic divorce attorney Arnie Becker on the old TV lawyer series  “L.A. Law,” was recruited in 2009, fifteen years after “L.A. Law” went to re-run heaven, to serve as the paid spokesperson for Innovative Legal Marketing, a Virginia-based company providing marketing services for lawyers and law firms. Now Bernsen has filed a lawsuit claiming he’s owed more than $668,000 after the company allegedly breached its contract and dropped him.

I have no idea whether Bernsen or the marketing firm has the law on its side in the suit, but I do know this: for a legal services marketing firm to recruit the actor who played Arnie Becker to promote legal services is an implicit insult to the legal profession and the intelligence of the public. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: “The Video Vigilante” of Oklahoma City

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The Video Vigilante

Brian Bates, or “The Video Vigilante,” has spent 15 years exposing and documenting street prostitution in Oklahoma City. He lurks around an area of south Oklahoma City known for frequent prostitution, waits for a prostitute to get into the car of a customer and follows it to their destination. Then, videotape engaged, he opens the driver’s side door and shouts, “You’re busted, buddy!”

Then he places the video on YouTube’s John TV channel, Bates’ website, JohnTV.com, or his Facebook page or Twitter feed. He sometimes send the links to the guilty men’s spouses. Sometimes, knowing this, his prey beg for mercy, which is never forthcoming.

A two-part Ethics Quiz:

1. Is this admirable behavior? Ethical behavior? Continue reading →

Double Standard Ethics: What the “Occupy Wall Street” Demonstrations Have Revealed So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

1. When well-behaved middle-class Americans held rallies protesting specific U.S. policies, notably excessive spending, a CNN  reporter challenged them on camera and accused the effort of being a creation of Fox News. When incoherently chanting anarchists, radicals and unemployed youths hold rallies advocating nothing constructive whatsoever, reporters are invariably respectful.

2. Thanks to the efforts of snickering CNN and MSNBC hosts, the emerging Tea Party was immediately referred to using a crude term for a gay sexual act. No such denigrating term has been employed to describe “Occupy Wall Street.” Continue reading →

Ethics Confusion in Ken Burns’ “Prohibition”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I enjoy all of Ken Burns’ documentary series, and I am grateful for them. They do a better job of teaching history than the schools, and they are always thought-provoking and, of course, beautifully executed. At the same time, I am aware of the limitations in Burns’ approach, beginning with his genre. Documentaries are inherently misleading works, more misleading in the hands of some, like Michael More, than others. The sifting of which material to use, how to balance issues, choices of photographs and film footage and even the inflections of voice betrayed by narrators (To his credit, Burns has all of his narrators deliver their script in the exact same measured and deliberately-paced tones; I found myself wondering how many times Burns forced “Prohibition” narrator Peter Coyote to listen to previous Burns stand-ins David McCullough and John Chancellor in “The Civil War” and “Baseball” until he sounded as much like their clone as they sounded like identical twins) unavoidably slant the final product, sometimes unintentionally, but usually with a motive. To the extent that viewers realize this, it is an ethical medium, but for most, especially those unfamiliar with the subject matter and with no independent knowledge to draw on, it is not.“Prohibition,” Burns’ latest PBS series that debuted last week, has a more obtrusive agenda supported with more dubious logic than his previous documentaries, reminding me, at least, that his historical conclusions should always be taken with a measure of skepticism. Continue reading →

1. Now THAT’s Unethical 2.Yuck! 3. Is There Hollandaise With That?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

From his pants to your mouth

Details of a hostile work environment law suit from the Courthouse News service:

“A sous-chef at Morton’s of Chicago in Boca Raton claims managers encouraged employees to sexually harass one another, and that the kitchen high-jinks endangered the public, as one worker would “place stalks of asparagus inside his underwear, next to his anal/genital area in order to simulate his penis,” then would “serve that asparagus to Morton’s unsuspecting paying customers.”

If the plaintiff is making that up, he is spectacularly malicious, and also has a future writing Farrelly Brothers screenplays. If he is not making it up, I may never eat asparagus again.

Attorney General Holder, Fast and Furious, and Congressional Perjury

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"Oh, NOW I see where the confusion is...AG Holder thought the Congressman was asking about when he saw the MOVIE called 'The Fast and Furious.' It's an honest mistake. The Attorney General loves his Netflix!"

It is looking increasingly likely that Attorney General Holder lied to Congress on May 2, 2011, when he was asked by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa about when he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Fast and Furious gun-running fiasco. In this he is following a grand tradition among U.S. Attorney Generals: the last one, Bush crony Alberto Gonzalez, almost certainly lied under oath to Congress too.

Fast and Furious was a botched gunrunning enforcement operation in which illegal guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives intentionally allowed to be smuggled into Mexico ended up being used to kill an Immigration Customs Enforcement agent and a U.S. border patrol guard.  Holder was called before Issa’s committee in a typical “what did the top guy know and when did he know it?” inquiry. In response to the latter part of that question, Holder told the Committee that he was “not sure of the exact date, but I probably learned about Fast and Furious over the last few weeks.”

CBS and Fox News have uncovered a series of e-mails and memos that show unequivocally that this was not true. Continue reading →

Unethical Employer of the Week: William Ernst

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There has been an increase, it seems, in news reports about outrageously abusive, sadistic, unfeeling or generally unethical conduct by employers, either because the nation’s economic problems are bringing out the worst in people, or because I’m getting better at finding them. This story settles it: I’m establishing a new regular category, “Unethical Employer of the Week.” And there couldn’t be a more deserving initial awardee than William Ernst, the owner of a chain of QC Marts in Iowa and Illinois. Continue reading →

When Unethical Meets Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Cuation! Moron at Work.

Pilots flying multi-million dollar aircraft to Navy Air Station Oceana say that beams coming from laser pointers are blinding them as they make their approach. The Navy says there has been a sharp increase in the number of laser sightings within the last 18 months. “You’re getting ready to land–you’re getting ready to go through a number of steps configuring the airplane to touchdown. In the two-seaters, there aren’t any sticks in the back. So if you lose the ability to fly it in proximity to the ground, it gets pretty dangerous,” says Webb. In short, the laser pointers are risking military planes and lives. Continue reading →