justice

There Is Nothing Noble About A Deathbed Confession…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Don’t you just hate it when you think you are going to die and confess a horrible crime and then you miraculously recover?

…which is why this O. Henry-esque story makes me smile.

Someone stabbed Joyce Goodener in the neck, set her on fire and bludgeoned her to death with a cinder block in 1995. Nobody was arrested for her murder. But three years ago, James Washington, a Tennessee prisoner, thought he was dying from a heart attack. The downside of confessing to a crime right before you kick off is nil, and the up-side might be admission through the Pearly Gates, so Washington confessed to a prison guard that he had killed Goodener. “I have something to tell you. I have to get something off my conscience and you need to hear this,’” he told the guard, James Tomlinson. “I killed somebody. I beat her to death.”  He confessed all the gory details. Then, conveniently unburdened, Washington waited to go into the light, to mercy, forgiveness, and maybe a nice pair of wings and a golden harp.

Oops. He recovered. Now he’s facing at least another 50 years in prison.

There is nothing admirable or ethical about a death-bed confession. It doesn’t show contrition, honesty, accountability or good citizenship. Such confessions are examples of self-serving cowardice. Although it is true that the world would be a better, safer place with Washington gone, the fact that he now has to face earthly retribution rather than reap the benefits of heavenly absolution is the essence of justice.

But hey, thanks for sharing, James!

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Facts and Graphic: Daily News

Ethics Hero Emeritus, Sort of: Russell Means (1940-2012)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Fly swift, like an arrow.”

Clarence Darrow, the greatest of all American criminal defense lawyers, admired more than one criminal. One he especially admired was John Brown, the radical, violent and possibly insane abolitionist whose deadly 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry, Maryland was a terrorist act by any definition. Brown was hung for it, but he became a martyr for the anti-slavery movement, and his raid a rallying point for its cause. Darrow believed that some societal wrongs were so resistant to law and democracy that their grip could only be loosened by violence, and so he extolled men like Brown, whom he regularly eulogized in public with a fiery speech that concluded,

“The earth needs and will always need its Browns; these poor, sensitive, prophetic souls, feeling the suffering of the world, and taking its sorrows on their burdened backs.  It sorely needs the prophets who look far out into the dark, and through the long and painful vigils of the night, wait for the coming day.  They wait and watch, while slow and cold and halting, the morning dawns, the sun rises and waxes to the noon, and wanes to the twilight and another night comes on.  The radical of today is the conservative of tomorrow, and other martyrs take up the work through other nights, and the dumb and stupid world plants its weary feet upon the slippery sand, soaked by their blood, and the world moves on.”

I immediately thought of Darrow’s words about Brown* when I learned that Russell Means had died this week at the age of 72. Clarence Darrow would have loved Russell Means. Continue reading →

The Part of Legal Ethics The Public Will Never, Ever Understand

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Sen. Brown has the pulse of the public on this issue, and like the public, he’s ignorant.

Especially since politicians like Scott Brown keep making sure that they misunderstand.

In this week’s Massachusetts Senate debate between Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, Brown slammed the anti-corporate crusader, the self-styled intellectual catalyst for the Occupy Movement, for accepting $250,000 from the Travelers insurance company to help the company deny claims for asbestos poisoning. He said:

“You chose to side with one of the biggest corporations in the United States: Travelers Insurance. When you worked to prohibit people who got asbestos poisoning, and I hope all the asbestos union workers are watching right now. She denied, she helped Travelers deny those benefits for asbestos poisoning, made over $250,000 in an effort to protect big corporations….”

Brown is accurately stating the way most people look at lawyers and what they do. But he is absolutely mistaken. His characterization of what Warren did is incorrect, and his inference of hypocrisy is unfair.  It is all the worse because he is a lawyer himself. If Senator Brown, as a lawyer, doesn’t understand what’s wrong with his accusation, he should. If he does know, then he is undercutting his own profession for political gain. [NOTE: The original version of the post incorrectly stated that Brown was not a lawyer. My thanks to Mass lawyer James Flood III for flagging the error.] Continue reading →

Protecting Rapists and Savanah Dietrich’s Vigilante Tweet

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Savanah Dietrich, teen rape victim facing charges for refusing to protect the privacy of her rapists,

One of the Ethics Alarms principles that many find infuriating is my position that violating the law is inherently unethical. Like all rules, this one doesn’t make sense in all cases, and one of them has surfaced in Louisville, Kentucky.

Savanah Dietrich, a 17-year-old rape victim, was infuriated when her teenaged rapists managed to negotiate a lenient plea bargain for sexually assaulting her and circulating pictures of the incident to friends. She took to Twitter, named them and described what they did to her, despite being under a confidentiality order from the judge in the case. Her attackers were juveniles, and the court records were sealed. Now Dietrich is facing a jail sentence longer than her rapists, because their attorneys have asked a Jefferson District Court judge to hold her in contempt. Continue reading →

Justice for the Nicholas Brothers [Corrected (1/27/25)]

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

At the Sun Valley Lodge, there is a television station devoted to playing the 1941 film “Sun Valley Serenade” on a loop. It is a genuinely awful movie, starring John Payne of “Miracle on 34th Street” fame, Norwegian ice skater Sonia Henie, and Milton Berle, although it does show the famous ski resort in the days when guests used to be towed around the slopes on their skis by horses. Last time I was in Sun Valley to give a presentation, I watched about half the film in disconnected bites, since I never can sleep on such trips. This time I finally saw the whole thing. At about 3 AM, as Glenn Miller was leading his band in the longest version of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” in history, Fayard and Harold Nicholas suddenly flipped onto the screen, and Sun Valley Serenade briefly went from fatuous to immortal.

If your reflex response to that last sentence was “WHO??“, you are part of the reason for this post, and also in the vast and deprived majority of Americans. As I went among my future audience of lawyers and their spouses yesterday morning, happily informing them that the terrible movie playing around the clock in their rooms included the dance team called “the unforgettable Nicholas Brothers” in more than one tribute, I learned that none of them had any idea what I was talking about, and many of these individuals were old enough to have been able to see Fayard and Harold in a theater. The Nicholas Brothers were, you see, the greatest tap-dancers who ever lived, and the most amazing dance team that ever will be. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Tia Skinner

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Tia wonders why her family has abandoned her. Uh,…Tia? Aren’t you forgetting something?

“It’s been rough. It’s hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye. It’s tough because that’s my family; they’re supposed to stay by you through thick and thin.”

—– Tia Skinner, a teenager serving life in prison for plotting a home invasion attack  that killed her father and seriously injured her mother, who was stabbed 25 times.

That’s right, Tia: it’s your family’s fault.

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Pointer: James Taranto

Facts and Graphic: Detroit Free Press

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Here is the Comment of the Day, Eeyoure’s deliciously indignant dressing-down of the jury whose verdict was discussed in today’s post, “Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim”:

“The jury’s verdict was absolutely perverse.  The jury ignored truth about specific law for which they were responsible for finding guilt or innocence, where evidence existed beyond reasonable doubt that the law was broken.  Simultaneously, the jury concluded that irrelevant evidence, plus the defendant’s testimony, proved guilt beyond doubt of a person who was not charged, not on trial, for breaking of law for which the jury was not responsible for finding guilt or innocence.

“The jury’s verdict was the culmination of an orgy of medieval reparations-groupthink, a determined seizing of lowest available ground in the terrain of societal unrest.  The members of the jury made themselves a proud, self-serving, self-satisfying gang of “justice”-dolers, caught-up in extolling the glories of vengeance.  This was a jury that obviously considered with the utmost gravitas (that is sarcasm) the notion that “justice delayed is justice denied.”  No matter how long was delayed the justice THEY felt was due, they saw it as their sovereign right to determine that such justice would not be denied, and to determine who would deliver (that is, who did deliver) that justice, blameless.  (more sarcasm coming) What a shining moment in jury-rigged righting of historical wrongs! (end sarcasm)

“Well, chances are rather high that none of the jurors will ever read here.  So, they can just each go their merry way, keep marching merrily along as ignorantly and unthoughtfully as ever, proud of the “justice” they have served.  Without ever taking the simplest, tiny, extra step of considering, for example, by their own jury-“reasoning,” how their verdict thoroughly justifies any friends, allies, or sympathizers of the old man who was beaten in the retirement home stalking THEM (the jury members and their hero) for the rest of THEIR (the jurors’ and hero’s) days – then suddenly, at a convenient and opportune moment, beating every one of THEM every bit as savagely as was beaten the man by the assailant whom they let off the hook.

“With “justice” like this jury has upheld, who needs to hold a stinkin’ court?”

Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Really?

A San Jose jury acquitted William Lynch of criminal assault, despite his admission that he had beaten a former priest who had molested him as a child. After the acquittal, Lynch was cheered outside the courtroom.

Lynch told reporters he fully expected to be convicted, but had hoped that his testimony would call more attention to the child abuse problems in the Catholic Church. He visited his victim, Rev. Jerold Lindner, at the retirement home where he now lives.  The 65 year-old who allegedly molested Lynch and his younger brother in 1975 was confronted by Lynch, and when he told Lynch that he didn’t remember him, Lynch attacked him and “beat him almost to death” according to witnesses.

Your Ethics Alarms Quiz question:

Was the jury verdict ethical? Continue reading →

Justice Is Served: Torry Hansen Gets The Bill

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Look out for that sword!

Two years ago, Ethics Alarms featured the story of Torry Hansen, the Tennessee adoptive mother who couldn’t handle her adopted Russian child, so she pinned a note on him and sent him back to Russia, alone, on an airplane. I wrote:

“Sending an innocent child back to the orphanage, like he was a defective toaster returned to Walmart, is the ultimate betrayal, as unforgivable as treason, and far, far worse than adultery. A child who, in Justin’s case (his Russian name had been Artyom), was neglected by his alcoholic mother and taken by the state, sent to an orphanage and given to an American mother, has been rejected again and abandoned. I cannot imagine what this would do to a child. I cannot imagine allowing anyone’s child to endure this, least of all my own.

“Her son was making her life impossible. She couldn’t handle the stress; she looked into the future and saw only problems. Check: I understand. I empathize with Mrs. Hanson completely, for we knew when we adopted our son that this was a possible scenario. Again, it doesn’t matter. Sending an adopted child back to Russia is not an option, because it is absolutely wrong, like murder, like torture, like sacrificing one human being to save another. Never. Absolutely never. Nothing can ever justify treating a child—your own child— like that.”

Now CBS has reported that Hanson will have some consequences of her actions in addition to being roundly detested by every adoptive parent in the world (like me) and being a permanent member of the Bad Mothers Hall of Infamy. Continue reading →

Chris Matthews Gets A Lesson On The Golden Rule

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Don’t forget…Cliff almost WON Jeopardy!

Chris Matthews, the MSNBC “Hardball” host, has frequently mocked Sarah Palin’s knowledge and intelligence, and often used an iconic TV game show to do it. Such as:

  • “Is this [vice presidential debate] about her brain power?… Do you think cute will beat brains?…Do you think she’d do better on the questions on Jeopardy! or the interview they do during a half-time?…My suspicion is that she has the same lack of intellectual curiosity that the President of the United States has right now and that is scary!”
  • “They find these empty vessels who know nothing about the world! Nothing about foreign policy! Who immediately begin to spout the neo-con line. I read her book — it’s full of that crap….It’s unbelievable how little this woman knows!…Don’t put her on Jeopardy!” Continue reading →