Workplace

Now THAT’s Hypocrisy: The Prosecutor and the Teenager

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As part of Ethics Alarms’ continuing effort to clear up the rampant confusion among the American public and media regarding what constitutes hypocrisy, I offer this illustrative tale.

Former Rock Island County, Illinois State’s Attorney Jeff Terronez has already pleaded guilty to providing alcohol to a minor.  As part of his plea deal, which allowed him to avoid more serious charges, he resigned his position as State’s Attorney, forfeited his pension and agreed to never seek public office again. Now it appears that the circumstances of his misconduct may result in a mistrial in the case in which  Terronez first encountered his 15-year-old victim.

You see, the young woman to whom Terronez provided alcohol was the victim and complaining witness in a previous case Terronez prosecuted, in which high school teacher Jason Van Houtte was accused of inappropriate contact with a 15 years old female student. Terronez saw to it that Van Houtte was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. Meanwhile, he met with Van Houtte’s comely prey and plied her with liquor socially…at least.

That’s right: the prosecutor began an “inappropriate relationship” with the under-aged complaining witness in a case he was simultaneously prosecuting involving a teacher’s “inappropriate relationship” with the same girl!

Now that’s hypocrisy.

No, It Still Doesn’t Justify Torture

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

No.

The news of how Osama bin Laden was finally tracked down and killed has caused a predictable outbreak of consequentialism. It appears that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided some of the key intelligence that led to the successful operation in Pakistan while he was undergoing “enhanced interrogation” in CIA prisons in Rumania and Poland. “See?” Dick Cheney’s fans are saying today. “Rendition and torture work. We wouldn’t have killed Bin Laden without them. So what do you think of those tactics now?” The opponents of torture who foolishly argued against it based on pragmatic considerations—“Torture doesn’t work!”—rather than ethical ones–-“It is absolutely wrong!“—set themselves up for this.  Now what should they say? Continue reading →

The Incredible Self-Disproving Rationalization!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A Chicago scene website is highlighting businesses serving citizens of the Windy City that market lies.  It focuses on three of the breed. The first, The Alibi Network, was one of my Unethical Websites of the Month years ago. For a fee, it will concoct and document elaborate support for excuses, fake illnesses, adulterous getaways masquerading as business trips. It’s the kind of enterprise George Costanza might have started; if you have a strong stomach, you can read about it here.  The second is “Rent-a-Date,” which is less objectionable than it is sad, an escort service with no sex, for guys who can’t get a date and want to impress employers, old classmates and other shallow people by hiring one and pretending that the relationship is real. You know, George would have used this one, too.

The third of these slimy businesses, however, is truly awful, an outfit called “The Reference Store”
The business creates phony former employers, complete with websites and local phone numbers, for job seekers worldwide. (You know, George could have used this service to give credibility to his favorite fake reference, “Vandelay Industries”! It’s a George Costanza Tri-fecta!) Continue reading →

Flashback: “Ethics Test at McDonald’s”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Background: The McDonald’s beating and video story reminded me of another ethics essay arising out of a McDonald’s incident, one that I was personally involved in. This post first appeared on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2006, and reading it again, I realized it was one of the first times that I used the ethics alarms imagery that became the basis for this blog. The incident that inspired the essay still troubles me. I wish I could blame McDonald’s for the callousness that my 2006 experience and last week’s incident in Maryland exposed, but unfortunately, our problem relates to the Golden Rule, not the Golden Arches. Here is “Ethics Test at McDonald’s”:

Life gives ethics tests like pop quizzes. You often get no warning, and if you’re thinking about something else, you might not even realize the test is going on. Continue reading →

The MacDonald’s Beating Video, Another Dead Canary in The Ethics Mine

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Vernon Hacket: videographer, violence afficianado, shameless bystander

Last week, In the early hours of  April 18,two teenaged patrons at a Rosedale, Maryland MacDonald’s brutally beat Chrissy Lee Polis, 22, into a seizure. The attack was captured on a video recorded by Vernon Hackett, one of the MacDonald’s workers, on a cellphone camera. Other employees can be heard laughing on the video, and Hackett apparently is heard warning the attackers that the police are coming. He has been fired by the restaurant’s proprietor.  (More on this here.)

His firing was well-deserved, but it doesn’t begin to address the disturbing implications of the incident. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Sen. John Ensign

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“While I stand behind my firm belief that I have not violated any law, rule, or standard of conduct of the Senate, and I have fought to prove this publicly, I will not continue to subject my family, my constituents, or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings.”

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), announcing his resignation from the U.S. Senate about two years late. Ensign’s continuing service in the upper chamber has been a continuing embarrassment thanks to a 2009 sex scandal and sordid cover-up attempt. Interestingly, Ensign maintains that such conduct doesn’t violate any “standard of conduct” for him and his colleagues.

Sadly, perhaps he’s right.

“I didn’t violate any laws or rules” has been Ensign’s mantra since it came to light that he: Continue reading →

Are Conviction Bonuses For Prosecutors Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Next, how about a bonus for confessions?

Sometimes a story starts the ethics alarms ringing so loudly that it is hard to think about anything else. It is rare, however, to have this occur when it is not entirely clear what is so unethical. An unusual bonus arrangement in Colorado is in this category.

Carol Chambers, the District Attorney for Colorado’s Eighteenth Judicial District, offers financial incentives for felony prosecutors who meet her office’s goals for convictions.  Plea bargains and mistrials don’t count in the incentive program; they have to be trial convictions.  The bonuses average $1,100, and Chambers says she gives them out to encourage prosecutors to bring her district’s rates in line with other jurisdictions in the state. No other Colorado DA gives out bonuses, or bases evaluations on conviction rates. Continue reading →

The Professions Most Likely to Cheat on Their Taxes?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Gee, where do "Treasury Secretaries" fall on the list?

A study of I.R.S. data by a University of Chicago graduate student, now Doctor, Oscar Vela,  produced the following list of the professions most likely to file fraudulent tax returns, at least according to his analysis. Make of it what you will. The Time Magazine website blog post about the list is worth reading, first for the blogger’s highly questionable theories explaining, for example, why lawyers aren’t on it, but mostly to see conclusive proof that Time is hiring English-as-a-second-language night students, relatives of Ko-Ko the talking gorilla, or stroke victims to write their blogs. Sample sentence: “His conclusion was that as much as we would like to think so we pay taxes out of  the goodness of our hearts, or even because we are fearful of fines or worse.” Henry Luce just did a back-flip in his grave.

Dr. Vela’s theory is that the professions that are required to maintain a perception of integrity are less likely to cheat. Let us say that I am dubious. Why then are scientists so high on the list?

Here it is: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Actress Reese Witherspoon

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Him: "AchOO!" Her: "You disgust me!"

“He had a very runny nose. It wasn’t appealing. It wasn’t pleasant.”

Actress Reese Witherspoon, describing to MTV in decidedly negative terms her sex scenes with “Twilight” hearthrob  Robert Pattinson in the soon-to-be-released film “Watter for Elephants.”

I’ve always liked Witherspoon, but it just doesn’t get much meaner and unprofessional than this.  Love scenes and sex scenes are potentially embarrassing for any actor or actress, and film and stage professionals recognize this and scrupulously apply the Golden Rule. If “kissing and telling” is bad, “fake sex and telling” is worse, not merely a breach of trust and confidence, not simply unfair and disrespectful, but a stunning  violation of professional standards. It is also irresponsible for an actress to attempt to shatter a film’s premise before it even opens.

I don’t know what Pattinson did or said during the shoot that provoked the actress to go out of her way to publicly embarrass him, but good luck to Witherspoon the next time she has to play a love scene with an actor. The ironic part is that Pattinson was being thoroughly professional by gamely sticking to the shooting schedule that required him to portray passion when he was suffering from a bad cold….and this is the thanks he gets.Wow.

Reese Witherspoon’s stock in trade has been playing spunky, nice girls. It seems she’s a better actress than we ever realized.

Kobe Bryant’s Two-Word Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

"Fucking" + "faggot"= ?

In the heat of an NBA game, Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant shouted a two-word epithet at a NBA ref, estimated to be the 9,675,987, 555, 321,005, 349,674, 021st time a player has insulted a ref in hoops since they started keeping count in 1973. Unfortunately, the two words were “fucking faggot.”

And it was picked up by the TV microphones.

In rapid succession, the Gay Lesbian Transgendered advocates were all over the NBA,  calling a foul; Bryant was apologizing, and the NBA was fining Bryant $100,000.

Ethics train wreck. It’s a train wreck because whatever happens at this point, the result has ethical problems, and the lesson is ethically muddled. There is no question at all that if the remark by Bryant hadn’t been picked up by the mics, there would be no issue, no controversy. But it was, which means that a comment intended for one individual (if that) became a national display of incivility (or worse.) Continue reading →