murder

More Ethics Of Terrible Secrets : Falling Bullets, Moral Luck, And The Accountability Check Of A Lifetime

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments
Somebody's happy!

Somebody’s happy!

Seven year-old Brendon Mackey was walking with his father in the parking lot of the Boathouse Restaurant in Midlothian, Virginia at around 9 p.m. last Thursday when a bullet, apparently shot into the air by a Fourth of July celebrant, fell through his skull, killing him.

“We don’t think this was an intentional shooting. We think that somebody in or around the area was celebrating the Fourth of July. Unfortunately we think they were shooting a gun in a reckless manner and this young boy is a victim,” a police spokesman told the media. The bullet, experts say, may have been fired as far as five miles away.

There is an investigation ongoing, but if history is any indication, Brendon’s killer will remain a mystery. Last Independence Day, a Michigan State student, engaged to be married, was killed the same way, by a bullet believed to have been launched into the sky by a celebrating stranger. Michelle Packard was 34. This spring, her still grieving  fiancé committed suicide.

Has a reckless celebrant with a gun  ever stepped forward voluntarily to accept responsibility for causing such a tragedy? I cannot find any news accounts that suggest it. Deaths from stray bullets fired into the air are rare: most fall to earth harmlessly, and even when they hit someone, the result is seldom a fatality. Still, firing a gun skyward is illegal, and truly reckless and stupid. My father told me that during World War II, he warned the men under his command that he would see that anyone firing a weapon into the air without good reason would be court martialed. “They really seemed surprised when I told them that the bullets came down,” he said. Continue reading →

Forget Gosnell: This Case Highlights The Real Abortion Issues

/ Jack Marshall / 310 Comments
John Andrew Weldon, and the mother of his baby, and her property.

John Andrew Weldon, and the mother of his baby, and her property.

John Andrew Welden is being held on first degree murder charges for tricking his girlfriend, pregnant with his child, into taking an abortion bill ( Cyotec, a drug used to induce labor) that she thought was an antibiotic, because he had tampered with the label. The fetus, nearly seven weeks old, miscarried as a result. You can read this ugly story here.

She wanted to have the baby, he didn’t. He arranged his own abortion, deceiving her, betraying her, mistreating her terribly. But how did he commit murder? What he tricked her into aborting wasn’t a human being. NARAL says so. Sandra Fluck says so. President Obama says so.

The ethical and logical problem with our abortion laws, as well as the rhetoric and conduct surrounding them, is that they lack integrity and embarrassingly so. A seven week fetus is not treated as a human life if a mother chooses to have an abortion, and a doctor performs it. This must mean, in any sane, fair and ethical system, that it is not a human life. If it is not a life if a doctor aborts it, it isn’t a life if a boyfriend tricks the mother into aborting it. How can it be? The fetus hasn’t changed, and the conduct hasn’t changed. All that has changed is the agent, and there are only a few ways that can alter the act. “A deceptive killing?” A killing without authority,” perhaps. But the agent can’t make eliminating something first degree murder, if it wasn’t a human being that was eliminated. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Ken at Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“If you practice as a lawyer, you owe it to your clients only to do the things you are competent to do. Embarking on the defense of a man accused of murder as your first trial is a moral and ethical outrage. Regrettably, the profession is barraged with eager voices telling us that attracting clients with puffery and keywords and Twitter accounts is the way to build a practice. Nobody’s reminding us that you have an obligation to know what you’re doing before you accept the client. Somebody should.”

—-Ken, the lead blogger/attorney/libertarian/ wit/ First Amendment champion at Popehat, summarizing the lessons of the Joseph Rakofsky saga. Rakofsky was a green D.C. lawyer ( he is still a lawyer, less green but sadder and wiser) who indeed did take a murder defense as his first trial, made an epic botch of it, and then launched a desperate defamation lawsuit at legal bloggers, like Ken, who had told his cautionary tale to the world with appropriate ire. The law suit was dismissed last week.

What's next for Joseph Radofsky? Maybe he'll run for President....

What’s next for Joseph Radofsky? Maybe he’ll run for President….

Competence is an ethical value, especially in the professions, but also in most pursuits. Taking on the responsibility of accomplishing a task creates a duty, and doing so without being justifiably certain that you will have the skills to do it is reckless and irresponsible.

Ken, an experienced and accomplished attorney whom I have consulted for his professional advice in the past, also knows that inexperience does have to be eradicated with experience, and a strict application of his statement in all cases would lead to a frustrating Catch 22. Every pilot has to take that first solo flight; every head surgeon has his first major operation; and Clarence Darrow had to take on that first murder trial before he could say with complete confidence that he knew exactly what to do. On a more basic level, any lawyer taking on a representation in a type of matter she has never handled before, such as drafting a will, will be, in  a sense, accepting a client before she knows what she is doing, because she hasn’t done it before. That’s okay, however: the ethics rules, as expressed in the American Bar Association’s Rules of Professional Conduct (in Rule 1.1) say its okay, as long as, by the time the task is underway, the lawyer is sufficiently competent: Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Disrespectful Courtroom Conduct!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
i-was-a-teenage-werewolf

“Come on, where’s your compassion? He’s just a mixed-up kid!”

TJ Lane, who pleaded guilty in the fatal shooting of three Ohio high school students, appeared in court for sentencing wearing a T-shirt with the word “killer” written on it in black marker,the same message that he had on the T-shirt he wore while shooting three studentsteens in the cafeteria at Chardon High School. Lane also charmed the judge before sentencing with a “vile and unprintable” courtroom description about what he did to himself while recalling his killing spree, raised a middle finger to the assembled and said, “Fuck all of you!”

The judge sentenced Lane to three life sentences without parole.

And should we extend this obviously troubled and confusedyoung man our sympathy, our pity, our compassion? Should we be on the watch for when he repents, shows remorse, indicates contrition, and seeks that “second chance” that all Americans, indeed all human beings, deserve, with our hearts and arms ready to receive him back into civilized society?

No.

 

Unethical Quote of the Week: “Anonymous”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“In coordination with federal authorities, the LAPD is now conducting a massive manhunt for The Dark Knight Christopher Dorner, so that they may effectively silence him forever without due process. And now since the authorization of drones have been approved for the first time ever to pursue and execute an American citizen on United States Soil, the US Government will stage this event to set a new precedent from which it can assassinate American citizens for little to no reason at all. But do not misinterpret us for we do not condone the vicious acts that Dorner has allegedly partaken in. Instead we sympathize and resonate with his struggle. Dorner was not born a killer he was a law abiding citizen that was tainted by the corrupt and inhumane practices of the Los Angeles Police Department who serve only themselves. We however do not accept this fate, and call upon our brothers to raise arms against the LAPD, for justice and for the lulz (?) we will rise to disrupt, dismantle and dissect all aspects of the manhunt whilst revealing the LAPD’s unwarranted hypocrisy.”

—-the criminal computer hacking vigilante group Anonymous, in a statement of support for renegade cop-killer Chris Dorner, who, with any luck, will have been captured or shot dead by the time this is posted.

Dorner and Anonymous, a match made in Hell.

Dorner and Anonymous, a match made in Hell.

In case it somehow eludes you, this is only the Unethical Quote of the Week because Ethics Alarms has no “Incoherent Quote of the Week,” “Idiotic Quote of the Week,” or “Pompously Embarrassing Quote of the Week.”

Anonymous stands as a illuminating example of what happens when power, in the form of technological expertise, falls into the hands of child-like individuals completely devoid of ethics training, understanding, or analytical tools. Adept with a keyboard, their concepts of right and wrong are at the rudimentary level of higher primates in a jungle environment. Hence we get nonsense like …

  • “…the LAPD is now conducting a massive manhunt for The Dark Knight Christopher Dorner, so that they may effectively silence him forever without due process.” No, the LAPD is conducting a manhunt because Dorner is a mad-dog killer of innocent citizens, and has to be stopped before he kills again. This organization’s reasoning stops at cognitive dissonance: hate what it hates, and you are thereby virtuous and good, even if you’re a vicious killer.
  • Continue reading →

The $500,000 Dead Baby: Signature Sign Of An Unethical Industry

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
Why certainly, we'll be happy to paint a target on your baby's back, no questions asked---just keep up with the premiums!"

“Why certainly, we’ll be happy to paint a target on your baby’s back, no questions asked—just keep up with the premiums!”

Three insurance companies allowed a Manassas, Virginia father with a suspicious history of violent family deaths to take out life insurance on his 15-month-old son in the astounding amount of more than $500,000. Now the boy, Prince McLeod Ram, is dead, allegedly drowned by the beneficiary of those policies, his dad, Joaquin Rams. He’s under arrest; the companies are unlikely to have to pay out a cent.

I suppose that makes this a good business deal for them.

For the dead kid, not so much. Continue reading →

A Compliant, Law-abiding and Unethical Murder House Sale

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
Immaterial

Immaterial

We last considered the issue of realtors sneaking murder houses by trusting purchasers nearly two years ago, when Jon Benet Ramsey’s home and place of death came up for sale. We had a knock down, drag out argument about it too. My position: while it might be legal for a seller not to disclose that a home was the site of a murder or worse (and in most places it is), and while many regard sensitivity on such matters mere superstition not worthy of serious respect, the seller and the realtor have an ethical obligation to inform  potential buyers when the property for sale is a murder scene As I wrote in the conclusion to the post about the Ramsey home:

“The truth is still this: there is something about the $2,300,000 house that makes it undesirable to a lot of prospects, and that means that even if the law doesn’t require the seller to tell interested house-hunters the story of the little dead girl in the basement, fairness and the Golden Rule do.”

This applies to the case at hand, where Pennsylvania’s Superior Court recently ruled that a murder-suicide occurring in a home is not a “material defect” that requires disclosure in that home’s sale. While a murder-suicide occurring in a house might be “psychological damage” to the property or its reputation, the court said, realtors don’t have to disclose it. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Case of the Maybe Killer Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Tough one! Are you ready?

Convicted killer and lawyer too?

Convicted killer and lawyer too?

Richard Buchli, a Missouri lawyer who was convicted of beating his law partner to death, was getting a new trial after it was revealed that the prosecution had illegally withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. There was some strong evidence supporting his conviction, such as the fact that the partner’s blood was splattered on Buchli’s clothes in a manner consistent with a beating death. (Buchli argued that he got bloody trying to revive his partner.) The court, however, frustrated with the prosecution continuing to drag out discovery and failing to deliver all the evidence to Buchli’s legal team, threw out the conviction completely and barred all the evidence in the case, effectively making Buchli, who had been in prison since 2002, a free man.

Now Buchli, who was disbarred in 2005 (killing your law partner is considered unethical), wants his law license back. Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz Question:

Should he get it? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The New York Post

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Autumn Pasquale appears to have been murdered by the two boys who lived next door because they wanted her bicycle.

From today’s New York Post:

“A New Jersey mom ratted out her teen sons for the murder of a 12-year-old girl after reading a Facebook posting hinting that one of them wanted to go on the lam, law-enforcement sources told The Post.”

Wrong. A courageous mother made the most difficult ethical decision of all, placing her duties as a citizen,  a member of the community and a neighbor above her duties of loyalty and love as a mother, to report her two sons for the murder of the 13-year-old girl who lived next door.

The Post’s use of the term “ratted out” is irresponsible and offensive. “Ratting out” is a pejorative term for reporting crimes to the police, and the foundation of a resilient and warped ethical code that works to the benefit of inner city thugs and gangs while undermining efforts to combat crime. The mother is an Ethics Hero, and deserved respect and admiration from the Post, not derision as a “rat.”

You can read the Post story here. A more responsible version is here.

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.

___________________________

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.