Law & Law Enforcement

Slap-happy Justice in West Virginia

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I confess: I love this story.

The Charlestown Gazette reports that Assistant Kanawha County prosecutor Stewart Altmeyer has been suspended for one month without pay for suggesting a plea deal that permitted the victim of petit larceny to slap the defendant in exchange for dropping the complaint against Dallas Jarrett, who had allegedly taken a few Oxycontin pills from Deborah McGraw’s medicine cabinet while performing some household repairs for her.

Altmeyer says that he relayed McGraw’s offer half-seriously, and was taken aback when the one-slap deal was accepted by Jarrett and his attorney. He shouldn’t have been surprised: Jarrett was facing up to a year in prison. I’d take Deborah’s slap. Heck, I’d take a Mike Tyson slap. Wouldn’t you? Continue reading →

The Not-So-Baffling Mystery of the Missing Ethics Rule

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

ABA  Model Rule 7.6: Political Contributions To Obtain Legal Engagements Or Appointments By Judges
A lawyer or law firm shall not accept a government legal engagement or an appointment by a judge if the lawyer or law firm makes a political contribution or solicits political contributions for the purpose of obtaining or being considered for that type of legal engagement or appointment.

That’s pretty clear, is it not? The American Bar Association, in its Model Rules of Professional Conduct, now followed (in various, eccentric forms, to be sure) by 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, emphatically declares that “pay-to-play” arrangements are unethical for lawyers even in states where the sleazy practice might be legal. “Pay-to play” is, after all, classic corruption, older than Mayor Curley, Richard Daley, Boss Tweed and Mister Potter. Lawyers contribute big bucks to the campaign funds of state and local powerbrokers, including Attorneys General and judges, and get big state contracts in return. It is indefensible ethically, although you can find plenty of people who will defend it, their tongues crossed tightly behind their backs all the while. Continue reading →

Blizzard Ethics and Parking Space Etiquette

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Great Blizzard of 2010 inspired The Washington Post to publish a piece about snow ethics, focusing especially on this touchy question: Is it ethical to park in a space shoveled out by someone else?

The problem with the article is that it doesn’t ask the ethically crucial second question: Is it ethical for someone to hold one of the rare cleared parking spaces on the street open, when other motorists desperately need a place to park? Continue reading →

Ethics Trainwreck in Kermit, Texas

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the tiny west Texas town of Kermit, just north of Mexico, an ethics train wreck is underway that may have long-term consequences far beyond the Lone Star State.

Anne Mitchell, a nurse with an impeccable record, became disturbed at the conduct of a physician at the Winkler County hospital where she worked. After unsuccessfully attempting to get hospital administrators to deal with what she believed was a matter of patient endangerment, she sent an anonymous complaint to the Texas Medical Board. This was a classic whistle-blower situation, protected by law and encouraged by the ethics code governing nurses. Unless she trumped up her accusations for a personal vendetta, she did exactly what the medical profession says she has an obligation to do, a responsible act of medical system self-policing that all too few nurses are willing to follow. Continue reading →

Outing the Judge

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Judge Being Gay a Nonissue During Prop. 8 Trial” says the San Francisco Chronicle headline…outing the judge in the Proposition 8 trial as gay.

If it the judge’s sexual orientation is a non-issue, why does the paper believe it is ethical to reveal it? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Based on what we’ve seen so far, this shouldn’t have happened. Even when we’re asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail, and discretion used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary.”—-New York Police spokesman Paul Browne, admitting that it was a mistake it was a mistake to arrest a 12-year-old junior high school student and taking her out of school in handcuffs for doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker. Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling on her desk Monday while waiting for her teacher to pass out homework, and the teacher summoned the police to report a 657…a doodle in progress.  The Men in Blue led Alexa out of school in cuffs  to a police station across the street, where she was detained for several hours. Continue reading →

More Outrageous Elementary School Abuse

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

An elementary school secretary, Jennifer Carter, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor child abuse charge stemming from an October incident in which she bound an unruly 6-year-old child’s hands and covered the child’s mouth with masking tape.

The student’s mother has filed a  $500,000 lawsuit against the Denver Public Schools.

My thoughts on this have been adequately expressed in previous posts here, and here.

I will only add this: before the internet, such local incidents of child abuse by teachers and administrators seldom received national exposure. Now they do, and because they do, there is real cause for alarm. Too many individuals of wretched judgment and cruel instincts, who make Miss Hannigan look like Mr. Chips by comparison, are being hired by our school systems, and too many children are being terrorized as a result, It is time to stop canonizing teachers and instead to look more critically at the serious deficiencies in hiring, training, and oversight. Thanks to the fact that student abuse is now hard to hide, parents should be on notice. There is a real problem with discipline in our school, and but this time it isn’t the kids.

Something’s Wrong Here…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

A Justice Department job announcement seeks up to ten attorneys for the Civil Rights Division to serve as Trial Attorneys in the Voting Section. It also says…

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine. Applicants who meet the qualification requirements and are able to perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation are encouraged to identify targeted disabilities in response to the questions in the Avue application system seeking that information.

Yes, it’s true: your government is looking for mentally retarded and mentally ill trial lawyers to work in the Justice Department. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Staff of Milford, Ohio Elementary School

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

A sixth grade boy informed his mother that his teacher and an aide at the Milford Elementary School had forced him to him to stand before his sixth-grade classroom as they put his shoulder-length hair in  ponytails, and then introduced him to his classmates as a new female student. Then the aide took him to other classrooms and did the same thing.

The mother has filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, seeking  damages for the alleged violation of her son’s constitutional rights and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Continue reading →

More Tebow Ad Ethics: Allred’s Complaint

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The much-anticipated Super Bowl ad telling the story of how quarterback Tim Tebow was born because his mother rejected a doctor’s advice to have him aborted for medical reasons is spinning off ethical issues at a dizzying rate.

Some are easily settled, as Ethics Alarms has already noted. There is nothing wrong with a Super Bowl ad raising substantive issues in the middle of beer commercials and tackles, as some have (incredibly) argued. There is nothing unethical about CBS changing its policy regarding issue-oriented commercials.  The fact that the network rejected such ads in the past does not make it hypocritical now. CBS, having ended a blanket prohibition, must now be fair and reasonable in deciding which issue ads to accept. Let’s see how it goes before we cry foul.

And there is nothing “anti-choice” about a woman’s story of how she chose not to abort her son, and is glad she did. It is not even an anti-abortion ad, unless the pro-abortion movement literally believes that it is wrong not to have an abortion. She had a choice, and she made it. The message of the ad does encourage thought about the consequences of having the procedure, which is unequivocally good.

Now, however, Hollywood lawyer and woman’s rights advocate Gloria Allred has suggested that Tebow and his mother are spinning a tale that is inspiring, powerful, and full of baloney, and she has sent CBS a letter of protest. Continue reading →