law enforcement

Ethics Dunce: Guitarist Carlos Santana

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Legendary rock guitarist Carlos Santana thought it was appropriate to lecture a ballpark full of Atlantans when he was  honored with a “Beacon of Change” award at Sunday’s MLB Civil Rights Game at Turner Field. Pronouncing Georgia’s  new immigration law just signed into law by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal “anti-American,” the Mexican-born Carlos Santana said,“I represent the human race. The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Dear Carlos: If you can't say something responsible about immigration, please just shut up and play.

Later, he told reporters , “This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job. No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”

Santana is entitled to express his opinion; he is even entitled to express stupid and ignorant opinions. But when he uses his fame, name recognition and a forum given to him as an honor to express a stupid, ignorant and irresponsible opinion, that is intolerable. Continue reading →

Colorado’s Adultery Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

Relax! It's OK...you're in Colorado!

In most states, adultery is one of the great examples of how something can be wrong and destructive without being illegal, a useful concept to have in mind when a corrupt politician or a crooked corporate executive  says “I didn’t break any laws!” It is also a good example of unethical conduct that is better controlled by ethics than law. A law against adultery is theoretically defensible as a deterrent of harmful social conduct, and the state definitely has an interest in preserving family stability. The problem is that regulating offenses triggered by love, lust and romance feels excessively intrusive to most of us. It has overtones of the Plymouth colony. For better of worse, minimizing adultery belongs in the realm of ethics, not the criminal law. Continue reading →

The Strange Case of the Opportunistic Fugitive

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The ethics call on this story is easy, though it is tempting to say otherwise.

Anthony S. Darwin was on the lam for six years in Wisconsin, eluding law enforcement authorities who were seeking to arrest him on pending charges of aggravated battery, bail jumping, battery, robbery with use of force, substantial battery and identity theft. Then he suddenly surrendered… because he realized he needed treatment for a life-threatening cancer. Continue reading →

Compassionate Police Work, Vegas-style

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

When should compassion, empathy, and caring outweigh diligence and duty? I’d say this is an example. Too bad the Las Vegas Police Department doesn’t see it that way.

13-year-old girl Takara Davis is in an induced coma to help her recover from being hit by a car. She was walking home and apparently was jaywalking when the accident occurred. Takara was issued a jaywalking citation, but since she had bleeding on the brain and was unconscious, a police officer made a special trip to the hospital to hand it to her mother. “She has got to go to court on March 6th,” Takara’s mom told reporters. Continue reading →

Are Restaurants That Hire Illegal Immigrants Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

No.

Next question.

Okay, let’s not be hasty. The New York Times Diner’s Journal asks the question, invoking the images of the 2004 film “A Day Without a Mexican,” in which all of California’s Mexicans suddenly disappear and the state is thrust into a world with far fewer gardeners, nannies, fruit-pickers, maids, cooks, and dishwashers. The film is the high-water mark of the essentially unethical rationalization for illegal immigration that is one of the main culprits for America’s unconscionable tolerance of it—that without illegals, the economy and quality of life of Americans would break down.

That the argument makes any sense at all is really a strong reason to stop illegal immigration, because it shows what happens when illegal and unethical practices becomes so entrenched that they warp the institutions, systems and cultural norms they affect, and corrupt the citizens who take advantage of them.  Continue reading →

“Genetic Surveillance” and Law Enforcement Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The “Grim Sleeper” serial killer was caught because California authorities found a partial DNA match with an individual in its database. That meant that the killer was probably related to the owner of that DNA, and indeed he was. We see this approach on the various “C.S.I” shows, but in real life using family DNA to identify a criminal is relatively rare, because only two states, Colorado and California, permit a  “familial search,” the use of DNA samples taken from convicted criminals to track down relatives who may themselves have committed a crime.

Why only two? The science is reliable, and a familial search can narrow the pool of suspects to the point where solving a crime becomes inevitable. Nevertheless, civil libertarians argue that the technique raises privacy concerns. Michael Risher, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, told the New York Times there was the possibility of innocent people being harassed in the pursuit of a crime. “It has the potential to invade the privacy of a lot of people,” he said. Continue reading →

“Seattle Cop Punches Girl In Face!” Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

YouTube is a wonderful resource that enriches our entertainment, makes us laugh, holds people in the public eye accountable for their actions, and give us better access to current events than ever before. In the area of police conduct, it has exposed abuses that might have otherwise escaped scrutiny. It is also eventually going to get a police officer killed.

The viral video of a Seattle cop punching a teenaged girl in the face has been getting the Rodney King treatment from the broadcast media and the web, with the immediate assumption that his actions are per se proof of police brutality and excessive force. All the societal hot buttons are stacked against the cop: he punches a woman (“You don’t hit a girl!“); she’s a teen (It’s an adult beating a child!); she’s black, and he’s white (Racism!); the underlying offense that triggered the incident was as minor as you can get. (“Jaywalking?”) Predictable, the sensation-hunting news outlets and the usual knee-jerk critics of the police (the N.A.A.C.P. and the A.C.L.U.) have pounced. This is neither a fair nor a competent way to examine a complex incident. Continue reading →

The Supreme Court Looks at Miranda and Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Berghuis v. Thompkins is another in the long line of opinions attempting to determine what the familiar words (to all you “Law and Order” fans), “You have the right to remain silent” really mean. At its core, however, it is about ethics.

The various opinions interpreting the landmark 1966 case ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, which ended the common police practice of sweating, beating and otherwise coercing confessions from criminal suspects in marathon interrogation sessions had, amazingly, never before dealt with the wrinkle presented in Thompkins. The suspect in a shooting was given the Miranda warning, but never said that he wanted his lawyer or that he refused to testify, as he had the right to do. He just sat through almost three hours of questions without saying a word, and then, near the end, uttered a one word answer, “Yes,” to the question of whether he would pray to God for forgiveness for the shooting.

This admission helped convict him at trial. Continue reading →

12 Questions About the Jessica Colotl Case

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The old saw is that hard cases make bad law.  The case of Jessica Colotl, a 21-year-old college student and illegal Mexican immigrant, is hard in some ways, to be sure. But it might end up making the law better. This is because the same circumstances that make it hard also highlight the ethical issues at the heart of the illegal immigration problem.  If we can agree on what is right and wrong concerning Jessica’s situation, a lot of the broader controversy will be clarified.

Colotl is a student at Atlanta’s Kennesaw State University, where she is two semesters from graduation. On March 29, she was pulled over by campus police for “impeding the flow of traffic.” She presented  an expired Mexican passport instead of a valid driver’s license, and was arrested and taken to a county jail. There she admitted that she was an illegal immigrant. She has been in the U.S. illegally since her parents brought her here at age 11. Now she faces possible deportation, though this has been deferred, in what can only be called an act of politically motivated mercy, until she has finished college.

Now let’s examine the ethics of her situation, fairly and dispassionately, by answering some questions… Continue reading →

Empathy and Ethics Insanity in Hollywood: “CSI New York”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In this week’s episode of C.S.I. New York, entitled “Unusual Suspects,” a 14-year old is shot and his younger brother intentionally misleads the police regarding the shooter, identifying the wrong suspect who is ultimately chased by the police and fatally hit by a bus while trying to flee. Eventually the truth comes out. The two boys–armed with a gun!—robbed a bank, and the older boy, who engineered the crime, was shot by a man who subsequently took the loot from them.

The boys knocked over the bank because they overheard their mother say that she couldn’t pay the rent. This is apparently sufficient justification for the bank and the District Attorney to decide not to press charges against the little dears. As the show ends, two of the C.S.I. squad look in on the hospital room, misty-eyed. where the wounded boy lies recovering, as his brother and mother sit vigil by his bed.

“There’s a lot of love in that room,” observes one of the officers.

A lot of felons, too. Continue reading →