Ask Ethics Alarms: “Why Is It Unethical For A Prosecutor To Say That A Witness Is telling The Truth?”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
"Would I try to convict an innocent man?"

“Why would I try to convict an innocent man? He has to be guilty.”

The primary Ethics Alarms topic scout, the Amazing Fred, has posed a question about this case, in which a child pornography conviction was overturned because the government prosecutor repeatedly stated that his witnesses were stating the truth, and that the government doesn’t prosecute defendants who aren’t guilty.

Fred asks the question this way:

“A prosecutor told a jury that prosecution witnesses were credible…Isn’t a defense attorney allowed to discredit prosecution witnesses? Why shouldn’t a prosecutor be free to argue the opposite?

The problem isn’t arguing that prosecution witnesses are credible, but rather the prosecutor appearing to personally vouch for the witness. Lawyers aren’t witnesses, and their opinions aren’t testimony or evidence. A lawyer can tell a jury that a defendant is guilty or innocent, but a lawyer cannot say “I believe “ a witness or “I believe” the defendant is guilty. It doesn’t matter what the lawyers believe, and they prejudice the jury by making their own credibility part of the case. Lawyers don’t have to personally believe in the positions they argue. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethic Quiz: ‘Springtime For Hitler’ Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Producers-2

This most recent  ethics thread commentary from Rick Jones (a.k.a. “Curmie,” who chronicles education fiascos, among other matters, during the year on his own blog) involves the recent kerfuffle over a high school production of “The Producers” having its Nazi decorations stripped away. I confess that I specifically requested Rick’s take on this one, knowing him to be a theater colleague as well as a teacher, and he did not disappoint….except that he uses the British spelling of “theatre.”

Here is Rick’s Comment of the Day on the Ethics Quiz: “Springtime for Hitler” Ethics.

Oh, Jack… You couldn’t just let me have a spring break without feeling compelled to reply to one of your posts, could you?

And… as I suspect you may have been expecting if not hoping, I agree with your arguments but disagree with your conclusion.

First, let me confess to ignorance of the stage version of The Producers. I know the film, of course, but being neither a big musical theatre guy nor made of money, I’ve never actually seen the play. Assuming it to be substantially similar to the film, therefore, is for me (but not for those more informed) a risky proposition.

It is not clear whether the school’s administration formally signed off on the choice of play, but de facto they did: the rights and royalties for a musical will cost—depending on a variety of factors such as venue size, number of performances, and ticket prices—hundreds or (more likely) thousands of dollars, and no high school theatre director can just write a check on a school account for that amount of money. Expenditures of that size need approval.

So here’s where I agree with your point that cultural illiteracy was very much at play from the beginning of this saga. I’m not suggesting that every high school administrator should have seen the movie or the play, but certainly the “Springtime for Hitler” shtick has long since passed into the public consciousness. I was too young (in junior high, perhaps?) to have seen the film on its first run, but I knew about the campy production number long before I actually saw the film when I was in high school or college. Similarly, I know that “I will take what is mine with fire and blood” is a ”Game of Thrones” reference without ever having picked up one of the books or tuned in to the television show. A competent administrator would at the very least have known what s/he was signing off on. Or… you know… asked: that’s an option, apparently.

Continue reading →

More Casting Ethics: The Stunt Performer Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Penelope Cruz and her stunt double. Works for me!

Penelope Cruz and her stunt double. Works for me!

To recap: This month, we have already debated a wide range of casting ethics controversies…

The position of Ethics Alarms is identical in all three controversies. The only consideration in casting a role should be the director’s artistic assessment of who will do the best job meeting the artistic and commercial demands of that role, under the constraints of the project, which can include budget, locale and workplace conditions. Ethnicity, race and off-screen appearance should be secondary, and better still, irrelevant. Efforts to substitute political, diversity or affirmative action goals  for artistic ones undermine the integrity of the work, and are unfair to the audience as well as the work itself. Make-up is a tool of the performing arts, and is unrelated to blackface, which was a convention designed to denigrate African Americans. Confounding make-up used to allow a performer to play a character of a different ethnicity, race or skin shade with minstrelsy and blackface is intellectually dishonest or ignorant.

Now comes a new issue in this spectrum: the use of white, male stunt performers to substitute for black or female stars.

This article, in The Telegraph,  begins with the assumption that the practice is inherently unethical:

“For decades, white stunt performers would paint their faces and bodies black to double for black stars. Similarly, it was not uncommon for stuntmen to put on heels and wigs to double for women. This was not happening in a vacuum: all the while, black and female stunt performers were pressing for recognition and the right to work in the jobs for which they were best suited….There is an understanding within the studios that such incidents don’t look good and need to be kept hush-hush.”

If, as the article and the Hollywood activists it interviews assert, the practice of “blacking up” white stunt performers is designed to exclude qualified black stunt performers from working, then of course it is unethical. Given the close-knit stunt performer community, described as a white, male, “old boys network” in the essay, this is certainly possible, even likely. Nevertheless, the assertion that there is anything intrinsically unethical, unfair or wrong with using a disguised white stunt performer to substitute for a black star, a male stunt performer to substitute for a female star, or any other variation imaginable is, as with the Hispanic and Afghan complaints, based on non-existent ethical principles. Continue reading →

Ethics Verdict: The Republicans Should Vote On (And Approve) Judge Merrick Garland

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Merrick Garland

For Senate Republicans, holding hearings on President Obama’s qualified and moderate nomination for the Supreme Court is both the ethical course and the politically smart course. It is also in the best interests of the nation.

In fact, the Byzantine political maneuverings by the President and the Republican leadership, by turns petty and ingenious, have handed Republicans a political chess victory, if only they are smart enough, responsible enough, and patriotic enough to grab it. Naturally, they aren’t.

It is infuriating, and all citizens should be infuriated.

A brief review of how we got to this point of looming GOP disgrace is in order:

  • Justice Scalia died, removing a towering conservative force from the Court. This meant that almost any replacement, and definitely one named by Obama, would make the Supreme Court more liberal than it has been in many years.
  • Seizing on the opportunity to make the election a referendum on the composition of the Court (which is was going to be anyway), Mich McConnell announced that no nominee named by Obama, an outgoing POTUS less than a year from leaving office, would be considered by the Senate.
  • Democrats and their allies in the punditry predictably pronounced this to be a breach of Senate duty. Embarrassingly, records surfaced of  Joe Biden asserting the same basic principle that McConnell was arguing for, when Bush was the President. Biden, I must duly note, is an idiot, but he’s still the current Vice President. Then again, all Biden has to do is say now, “I was wrong.” As he frequently is.
  • Though many predicted that Obama would name a transsexual, disabled black Jewish Latino judge with Socialist leanings to maximize the opportunity to politicize the process, he did the opposite. He named a qualified jurist.
  • The judge he named, Merrick Garland, is a white, veteran 63-year-old judge with a distinguished record, nothing flamboyant or controversial, who is as close to a non-ideological, non-partisan moderate as any Democratic President is likely to appoint from now until the stars turn cold.

Now, if Senate Republicans were interested in doing what is in the best interests of the nation—that is,  filling the Supreme Court vacancy as soon as possible, giving proper deference to a responsible and reasonable nomination by the President, avoiding a nasty and divisive partisan fight, and ensuring that the next Supreme Court Justice won’t be an intractable leftist firebrand determined to gut the Constitution or another “wise Latina” mediocrity who will pollute the record with touchy-feely ramblings—they would leap on this opportunity and unanimously confirm Garland, saying publicly that they reconsidered McConnell’s declaration in the interest of restoring the integrity of the nomination process and returning to the time before Democrats politicized the process beyond reason in the Bork hearings, giving the President his choice, regardless of philosophical bent, when the nominee is qualified, dignified, experienced and trustworthy. like Judge Garland Continue reading →

Don’t Say The System Doesn’t Work—It Worked Perfectly With Marco Rubio

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
As it turned out, this told us everything we need to know...

As it turned out, this told us everything we need to know…

Pundits, professors and even China are saying that the U.S. system of identifying qualified Presidential candidates doesn’t work or “is broken” because Donald Trump appears to have slipped through the net. But the occurrence of what Herman Kahn called “an unpredictable convergence of bad management and bad luck” only proves what Ethics Alarms has noted over and over again: no system, even the best, works all the time. I’ll post an article about all the people and circumstances that poked that hole in the Trump net once my nausea subsides, but in the meantime, I want to point out that the system worked perfectly with Marco Rubio. He wasn’t fit to be President, and the system exposed him brilliantly.

Good.

Rubio thought that he could follow the successful plan that put Barack Obama Barack Obama in the White House in 2008, despite similar deficiencies in experience. Like Obama, he was a young, fresh, minority candidate with a natural base, who projected intelligence and was an impressive speaker. The political and campaign processes, however, and his reaction to the stress of them, exposed his many flaws. The Obama plan wouldn’t be enough this time, in no small part because Marco Rubio is no Barack Obama: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Nautika Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 91 Comments

miami-teen-home-intruder

“You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood. You have to understand … how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point of view.”

—Nautika Harris (above, right), the cousin of a 17-year-old teen shot dead by a 54-year-old Miami woman as he tried to exit her home, which he had entered to burglarize.

Miami-Dade police say that Trevon Johnson, 17, burglarized the home of a 54-year-old old woman last week.

She was not in the house when the break-in occurred, but after being alerted by her surveillance system, she rushed home and found Johnson climbing out of a window. She shot him dead, and his relatives are outraged.

“I don’t care if she have her gun license or any of that. That is way beyond the law … way beyond,” Johnson’s cousin Nautika Harris told local radio station WFOR. “He was not supposed to die like this. He had a future ahead of him. Trevon had goals … he was a funny guy, very big on education, loved learning.”

And loved burglary, apparently. Continue reading →

Loyalty Drama: The Strange, Sudden, Ethical, Unethical Retirement Of White Sox First Baseman Adam LaRoche

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

chi-adam-laroche

Yesterday,  baseball’s Spring Training was shaken when Chicago White Sox first baseman Adam LaRoche unexpectedly announced that he was retiring, effectively giving up his guaranteed 13 million dollar salary. LaRoche had suffered a down year in 2015, but he was healthy, and assured of a place in the ChiSox line-up. The reason for the precipitous decision was mysteriously and ominously reported as caused by a “personal matter.”  Was there dire illness in the family? What would make a healthy athlete walk away from his team mates and so much money?

Today, the club revealed the surprisng answer. Last year, LaRoche’s son, Drake, 14, spent most of the season with his father and the team and even had his own locker in the home clubhouse at U.S. Cellular Field. Drake was with also with the team in this year’s spring training. White Sox executive vice president Ken Williams told LaRoche that he would have to limit the amount of time his son spent in the clubhouse this season, and in response, LaRoche announced he was quitting.

Again, the threshold question to so much ethical analysis is crucial: What’s going on here?
Continue reading →

The Ethics Of Judges In Love

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

gavel heart

When  attorney Joe Foley represented a client in a matter before Judge Scott Drazewski in early 2011, he was unaware that the married judge was involved a year-long secret romantic affair with Judge Rebecca Foley, the attorney’s wife.

Now both Illinois judges  have been disciplined by state legal ethics authorities for failing to reveal their romantic relationship and violating multiple ethics rules as a result. The ethics commission imposed a four-month unpaid suspension on Drazewski for “egregious” judicial ethics violations, and censured Judge Foley for assisting, aiding, abetting, and not reporting his violation or their affair. Continue reading →

KABOOM! The Worst Presidential Endorsement Ever From The Biggest Fool Ever To Run For President

/ Jack Marshall / 77 Comments
"Excuse me, Can someone direct me to Dr. Carson's head?"

“Excuse me. Can someone direct me to Dr. Carson’s head?”

I must admit, I’m a little annoyed at my head for exploding this time, even given the provocation. After all, it involves Ben Carson, and I assumed that the small but nauseating doses of Ben Carson idiocy I was forced to listen to during all those debates served as an anti-head explosion vaccination of sorts, though if Donald Trump is to believed, which of course he isn’t, I was risking autism. I assumed there wasn’t anything the deluded doctor could say that would be so stupid and outrageous that it could cause a brain-pan eruption at this point. Obviously, as I stare up at the brain-splattered ceiling in my office, I was wrong.

I now realize that Ben Carson may be the only living human being alive whom I would consider voting for Donald Trump to keep out of the Presidency. I’m not certain, mind you, but it’s stunning to me that anyone is even close to that bad. What would a choice between Trump and Dr. Ben be like? It would be like choosing between Billionaire Biff in “Back to the Future II” and Chance, the well-meaning, lucky moron in “Being There.“ It would be like choosing between Mister Burns and Homer Simpson.

When Carson announced he was endorsing Trump, some pundit wrote that it was “huge.” I tried to imagine the kind of voter who would regard the judgment of a manifest dim-wit like Carson a persuasive reason to vote for a massive fraud like Donald Trump. See, endorsements are silly all by themselves, unless you are just lost. Who is so devoid of pride and self-confidence that they think, “Well, I admire X, and thus I will assume that X’s judgement about who I should vote for to lead my country is better than my own”?*

Now imagine someone thinking that when the endorsement comes from someone who isn’t wearing pants, has a gooney bird nesting on his head, and is carrying a sign that says “Kourtney Kardashsian is God.” What kind of a person is persuaded by that fool’s presidential choice? Yet Ben Carson, with his bizarre belief about how the best person to handle the most difficult job in the world would be someone with no relevant skills or experience whatsoever—let’s not even get into his beliefs about pyramids and other matters—is no less ridiculous than the pantless goony bird character, and a lot more arrogant.

Endorsing Donald Trump is foolish, but no surprise when a Ben Carson—you know, a moron— is the endorser. Today, however, he “explained” his endorsement, and revealed that it was even more incompetent and irresponsible than an endorsement of an atrocious candidate is by nature.

Interviewed  on the “Steve Malzberg Show” yesterday, Carson explained that..

I. He wasn’t really all that sure that Trump would be a good President. See, Ben, an endorsement is supposed to tell people that you have decided that a candidate is the best candidate, and that generally is taken to mean that the endorser at least thinks he would be a good President. Ben is apparently from the Bizarro Planet, however, and he said…

“Even if Donald Trump turns out not to be such a great president, which I don’t think is the case — I think he’s going to surround himself with really good people — but even if he didn’t, we’re only looking at four years, as opposed to multiple generations and perhaps the loss of the American dream forever.”

Wait—who is running against Trump who will be elected for  “multiple generations” ? What the heck is Carson babbling about?

Get the gooney bird! But it got worse.

At least Carson thinks Trump is the best of a bad lot, right? Well, not exactly. Here’s Ben:

“I didn’t see a path for Kasich, who I like, or for Rubio, who I like. As far as  Cruz is concerned, I don’t think he’s gonna be able to draw independents and Democrats unless has has some kind of miraculous change… Is there another scenario that I would have preferred? Yes. But that scenario isn’t available.”

“With one of the other candidates, you mean?” Malzberg asked.

“Yes,” Carson replied.

What exactly does Carson think helps about a Presidential endorsement that is accompanied by the disclaimers that he isn’t really sure his candidate will be very good at the job, and that he would have preferred to endorse any of three other candidates? Does Carson think? Can he think? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Washington Post Sports Columnist Norman Chad On “March Madness”

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

printable-march-madness-bracket

“People often ask me, “Why do you ignore college basketball?” Really? That’s like asking a vegan, “Why do you ignore cattle farms?…Why wouldn’t I ignore college basketball? They just round up the usual suspects every year, and, believe you me, these people are awfully suspect. The game is rotten at its core; it’s only cheating if you get caught, and if you get caught, you’re only liable if you’re losing.”

—- Sports columnist Norman Chad, on why he doesn’t follow the NCAA basketball tournament.

To which I reply, “Exactly.”

As Chad notes in his column, big-time college basketball is pure dribbling corruption. The players are exploited and tossed aside, few of them graduating and most leaving with little real education. The athletic programs warp school priorities and eat up institution resources that should be devoted to the curriculum,  the typically coaches are paid more than any three faculty members combined, and they teach their charges that cheating pays. Continues Chad in his inimitable style:

But the players don’t bother me – they are like cattle, used for two percent milk and tenderloins until their services are exhausted. It’s the coaches that bother me – the See No Evil Hear No Evil Do No Evil Block/Charge No Evil shim sham flimflam riffraff sitting on the bench in those fine suits with their fat wallets.

Jim Boeheim? A bum. John Calipari? Bum. Rick Pitino? Bum. Roy Williams? Bum. If these fellas are earning big paychecks from institutions of higher learning, institutions of higher learning must be in a different business than they once were.

Boeheim and Co. run the whole shooting match, and no matter what they do, you can’t run ‘em out of town unless they miss March Madness three straight times. Which brings us to Larry Brown. He’s at his third college coaching stop – UCLA, Kansas and now SMU – and he’s three-for-three for NCAA infractions. If there were a Recruiting Violators Anonymous program, he’d be John Calipari’s sponsor!

Bingo. Continue reading →