Texas schoolteacher Gwen Patterson in Dallas found $470 cash and turned it in to the police as lost. The police said they would make the usual efforts to locate the owner. Gwen assumed she would hear if the money was claimed, and if it was not, that she would be contacted to pick up the cash herself. “I didn’t plan a big party, but I thought I could donate to some animal charities, and a relative is out of work,” she said. After four months of futile calls and being given the runaround, she was told that Dallas’ official policy is not to return lost money and valuables to the honest finder who turned it in, but to keep it. Continue reading
Law & Law Enforcement
The Perplexing “Nerd Defense”
Mr. Peepers, axe-muderer
The Wrestler, the Girl, and Cultural Confusion
"Wanna wrestle?"
Sixteen-year-old high school sophomore wrestler Joel Northrup forfeited his match against a fourteen-year-old wrestler with two X chromosomes, Cassy Herkelman, at the Iowa state wrestling championships, saying that “As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner.” Obviously Herkelman didn’t require protection from anyone or anything. She was her district’s 112-pound champion wrestler, and she won the Iowa championship for her class as well. Cassie had won 20 of 33 matches, all against male wrestlers, on her way to the state championship. Maybe Northrup didn’t want to risk being ridiculed for losing to a girl; maybe he was uncomfortable with the sexual overtones of an inter-gender contest. All we can do is assess his conduct by taking him at his word: he believes a young man wrestling a young woman is morally wrong, and was willing to forfeit a match he might have won. Joel was, after all, the fifth-ranked wrestler in the state at 112 pounds, and had a 35-4 record.
Was his decision admirable, or sexist? Was it gentlemanly, or demeaning? Continue reading
“The Strange Case of the Threatening Hypothetical”, Continued: The Verdict Is In!
The Victim
Lawrence Connell, the Widener School of Law criminal law professor placed on administrative leave for using the school Dean in a “violent scenario” to illustrate legal principles to his class, has given a revealing and clarifying interview to the National Association of Scholars website.
This section is most relevant to his current plight, and the fairness of complaints leveled against him by some of his students. It’s also about one of my favorite topics in criminal law, attempt law, which has a significant ethical component, as you will see. But the main point of interest is that includes one of the supposedly racist, sexist, threatening hypotheticals he used.
Q: Can you give me an example of a hypothetical you might have used in class, to which the students who complained might have been referring? Can you describe the context in which you would have used it? Continue reading
A Strong Consequentialist Argument for Steve Jobs’ Liver…But Is It Right?
Steve Jobs and friend
Back in June of 2009, when “Ethics Alarms” was but a twinkle in my eye, there was a momentary controversy when ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs was able to use his enormous wealth to land on multiple regional organ transplant lists, thus vastly improving his chances of getting a precious liver transplant in time to save his life. The California native ultimately got a Tennessee liver, but critics cried ethics foul. The organ transplant distribution system is not supposed to be based on wealth: otherwise, why not just auction off livers to the highest bidders? Because most insurance companies won’t cover multiple listings, only the richest patients can afford to employ this strategy, meaning that a system that is supposed to be means-neutral favors the wealthy after all. Continue reading
Unethically Leaked Unethical Manuscript Shows That Sarah Palin Is Unethical
The Anchorage Daily News has obtained a leaked (read: stolen) manuscript of an unpublished book detailing a close former aide to Sarah Palin’s discovery of the Republican star’s many character flaws. Among other items, the book suggests that she knowingly violated federal election laws.
Now what? Let’s run down the ethical docket: Continue reading
Good-bye and Good Riddance to Bush’s Unethical “Conscience Clause”
The Obama Administration has deep-sixed a controversial Bush Administration rule that permitted a wide variety of health care workers to refuse to administer treatments they found morally repugnant, what the Bush administration termed workers’ “right of conscience.”
Hospitals and clinics faced a loss of federal funds if they failed to uphold the rule, which itself was ethically repugnant. Kudos, thanks and hosannas to President Obama for getting rid of the Federal variety; some states, regrettably, still have them.
The American Medical Association’s position on the matter, embodied in a resolution passed by its membership, is clear and well-reasoned. Its reasoning applies to health care workers though the specific subject of the resolution was pharmacist conscience clauses.
The AMA’s resolution, “Preserving Patients’ Ability To Have Legally Valid Prescriptions Filled,” states: Continue reading
The Strange Case of the Threatening Hypothetical
Lawrence Connell, a tenured associate professor at Widener University School of Law in Delaware, is fond of using famous or familiar people in the hypotheticals he presents to his criminal law class. One of his imaginary scenarios involved him as a murderer, and the school’s Dean as his victim. Now he is on administrative leave from the school, as administrators investigate him for using “violent scenarios” that some students complained violated the school’s discrimination and harassment codes.
Widener University spokesman Dan Hanson, meanwhile, has declined to provide more details on the matter, but insists that Widener is committed to academic freedom.
Right. Continue reading
Lindsay’s Sad Lie
Lindsay Lohan, when the future was bright
I’m still rooting for Lindsay Lohan to turn things around, so I didn’t want to make too big a deal over her recent tweet in connection with the 24-year-old’s latest drama, a felony charge for walking out of a jewelry store wearing an unpurchased necklace priced at $2,500. Being still on probation as she is, the downward-spiraling former child star is facing the possibility of serious prison time. The tweet said, in part,
“…I was not raised to lie, cheat or steal…!”
This is either self-delusion on an epic scale or one of the most brazen lies since Lindsay told police, when they found cocaine in the pocket of her jeans, that she wasn’t wearing her own pants…or perhaps since she told a judge that she couldn’t make her court appearance on a drunk driving charge, after flying off to the Cannes Film Festival shortly before she was due in court, because “her passport was stolen.” Continue reading
Ethics Hero: New York Courts
Bravo!
New York’s court officials have decided to bar New York’s elected judges from hearing cases involving lawyers and others who make major financial contributions to their campaigns. The New York Times reports that the new rule of the state court system will be announced this week by Jonathan Lippman, the state’s chief judge. “It is believed to be the most restrictive in the country, bluntly tackling an issue — money in judicial politics — that has drawn widespread attention,” said the paper.
The new rule decrees that “no case shall be assigned” by court administrators to a judge when the lawyers or any of the participants involved donated $2,500 or more in the preceding two years. Continue reading
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