Attorney Barry Wilson is undoubtedly doing his job, and it is a tough one: arguing for the justice system to do less than throw the book at Boston’s disgraced former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, who richly deserves it. This is the lawyer’s sacred duty to a client that makes the profession the butt of jokes and the object of contempt, but it is an ethical and systemic necessity. It also can be stomach-turning in cases like Turner’s. All Wilson has in his defense arsenal is the hoary “he’s suffered enough” argument. It is always ethically dubious, and this time it boarders on ridiculous. Continue reading
criminal defense
Ethics Dunce: Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.)
I know that Ethics Alarms has been a bit relentless regarding the accusations and the innuendos against Sarah Palin and others in the wake of the Arizona shooting, but it is an unusually widespread out-break of unfair conduct, and the Ethics Dunces are coming in waves, and from all sides and sectors.
We have a sheriff on the scene, Clarence Dupnik, who seems determined to create the assassin’s defense for him, by claiming, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that he was driven to violence by inflammatory political rhetoric. Watch Loughner’s crack criminal defense team run with that. We have the nation’s supposedly premiere news source, the New York Times, running a revolting editorial describing Loughner’s attack as political, when this is clearly not true. (An excellent condemnation of the Times piece by James Taranto can and should be read here). Not to be outdone, Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat, took the same low road. Referencing defeated G.O.P. Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s justly criticized “Second Amendment solution” statement from the campaign (it probably, and justly, lost her the election), Clyburn tied it to Jared Loughner’s attack. Continue reading
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