“Oklahoma!”

Halloween Wrap-Up: The Asshole Files

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

smashed pump

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but “Ethics Dunce” doesn’t quite do the conduct of these Halloween 2015 miscreants.

Tell me again why we bother with this holiday that was once supposed to be the one day a year the evil spirits come out to play. Every year it is clearer that Halloween and its related activities is a festival for assholes. For example..

Robert Ledrew of Blackwood, New Jersey

There has never been a confirmed case of a child being injured by poisoned or otherwise tampered with Halloween treats. The one case, a murder, that caused a long-running panic was the father who poisoned his own son’s candy to collect on his life insurance. I guess  Robert Ledrew felt that a new generation of kids needed to be convinced that adults are lurking psychopaths, so he posted images of needle-filled candy bars to his Facebook page and reported to the police. Later he explained that he was trying to teach  children to be check their candy. I saw the photos as CNN reported the candy as a real attack on children, with no skepticism whatsoever. The tone was, “Oh, no, not this again! How horrible.” I turned to my wife and said, “This is a hoax. It’s always a hoax. Why doesn’t CNN know that?”

Ledrow was later arrested and charged with making a false police report.

Happy Halloween, Fort Bragg!

A yet unnamed soldier attempted to enter Fort Bragg on Friday night dressed as a suicide bomber, complete with a fake vest of explosives. Understandably, there was”an emergency response.” Continue reading →

Death Throes Of The Death Penalty: Dumb Expert, Dumb Advocates, Dumb Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“Next!”

As I recently concluded, the death penalty is beyond saving, not because it can’t be defended ethically and morally, but because the issues are tangled beyond repair.

The controversy over the legality of the so-called drug cocktails that somehow became our execution method of choice is a perfect example. The battles over capital punishment trapped policy-makers into this kinder, gentler, ridiculously complicated method of execution that has suffered snafus ranging from unavailable drugs to ugly extended deaths. The problem is the floating definition of “cruel and unusual punishment,” prohibited by the Constitution, but almost entirely subjective. Many judges think killing a killer is itself cruel by definition, and the more reluctant Western Europe becomes to execute the worst of the worst, the easier it is to make the argument that the death penalty is also unusual.

I don’t get it. I never have. India once executed condemned criminals by having the subject place his head on a stump under the raised foot of  trained elephant, which on a command would smash the head like a grape. Quick, painless–messy!—but virtually fool-proof. A pile-driver would be an acceptable equivalent.  Ah, but ick! In this stupid, stupid, intellectually dishonest debate, ick always equals “cruel and unusual,” because to opponents of the death penalty, killing people, even horrible, dangerous people, is inherently icky.

(Oddly, ripping unborn babies out of the womb is not, but I digress.)

I’ve admitted it, and I will again. (This lost Ethics Alarms Luke G., one of its best commenters the last time.*) It is obviously wrong to intentionally prolong an execution or deliberately cause pain, but if the occasional execution is botched and the condemned suffers, that should be cause for great rending of garments, nor should it be used to discredit capital punishment. As I wrote here about Clayton Lockett’s execution in Oklahoma…

“There was no question of Lockett’s guilt, and his crime was inhuman. Such wanton cruelty and disregard for innocent life warrants society’s most emphatic rebuke, and the most emphatic rebuke is death. It is essential that any healthy society make it clear to all that some crimes forfeit the continued right to not just liberty, but also life. Anyone who weeps because this sadistic murderer experienced a few extra minutes of agony in the process of being sent to his just rewards has seriously misaligned values. No method of execution will work every time, and to make perfection the standard is a dishonest way to rig the debate. If the death penalty is justified, and it is, then we should expect and accept the rare “botch.” Meanwhile, if the concern really is efficiency, reliability, speed of death and minimal pain, there are literally dozens, maybe hundreds of methods of swift execution that would accomplish this. They just won’t pass the standards of death penalty opponents, because no method will.”

Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the question of whether Oklahoma’s use of the common surgical sedative midazolam did not reliably make prisoners unconscious during lethal injections, thus violating the Eighth Amendment’s protection against “cruel and unusual punishment.” It’s a ridiculous case, which arises out of the botched April 2014 execution of Lockett that sparked the post I just quoted. It is a ridiculous case because the method of execution isn’t worth arguing over. Elephant. Head. Problem solved. Why is Oklahoma fighting about which cocktail to use? This is the anti-capital punishment team’s game, and sooner or later, the result is preordained.  Continue reading →

Sooner Ethics Quiz: Abuse Free Speech Rights, Or Ignore Them?

/ Jack Marshall / 63 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpNeHMlJiD4

David Boren, the president of the University of Oklahoma, announced that two students would be expelled from the school for leading a racist chant that was preserved on a video and went viral on YouTube. The video shows tuxedo-clad men from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity  on a bus chanting :

There will never be a nigger at SAE
There will never be a nigger at SAE
You can hang him from a tree
But he’ll never sign with me
There will never be a nigger at SAE

Who would want to be in a house with these assholes?

 The national fraternity apologized and closed the OU chapter. That was a proper response. (Tell me again what’s good about fraternities.) First Amendment specialist Eugene Volokh, however, pointed out on his blog that the expulsion was unconstitutional:

First, racist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline students based on their speech. That has been the unanimous view of courts that have considered campus speech codes and other campus speech restrictions …The same, of course, is true for fraternity speech, racist or otherwise…Likewise, speech doesn’t lose its constitutional protection just because it refers to violence — “You can hang him from a tree,” “the capitalists will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes,” “by any means necessary” with pictures of guns, “apostates from Islam should be killed.”

To be sure, in specific situations, such speech might fall within a First Amendment exception. One example is if it is likely to be perceived as a “true threat” of violence (e.g., saying “apostates from Islam will be killed” or “we’ll hang you from a tree” to a particular person who will likely perceive it as expressing the speaker’s intention to kill him); but that’s not the situation here, where the speech wouldn’t have been taken by any listener as a threat against him or her. Another is if it intended to solicit a criminal act, or to create a conspiracy to commit a criminal act, but, vile as the “hang him from a tree” is, neither of these exceptions are applicable here, either.

Hey, Oklahoma…Rodgers and Hammerstein just called. They’re officially changing the name of the musical and the song to “North Dakota!”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz:

Which is the greater ethics breach: the students abusing their First Amendment rights, or the University of Oklahoma violating them?

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Clayton Lockett Is Dead, Right? Then 1) Good! and 2) His Execution Wasn’t “Botched””

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

capital-punishmentThere are well-established group of ethics topics that will always cause spirited debates here, because they are issues that have always divided public opinion and always will: morality vs ethics, drug legalization, abortion, war, social justice, socialism, plus various controversies involving race, sexuality and gender. I try to wade into these only when a current even beckons, as to some extent the arguments are futile and familiar, and too many people refuse to think or listen anymore, retreating to slogans and reflex positions articulated by others.

I decided to wade into one of the most polarized, of these, capital punishment, when the Clayton Lockett execution in Oklahoma sparked a national debate that seemed strange to me, and indeed driven by the unwarranted assumption, uncritically accepted by the news media, that the painlessness of executions were a crucial feature of making them ethical as well as societally palatable. It also opened the question of whether one execution that doesn’t follow the script necessarily calls capital punishment itself into question. I confess: both in my post’s title and in the tone of my responses to anti-death penalty commentators, I intentionally sought to roil the waters of debate, and was determined not to allow the nice people who usually express compassion for the pain and suffering of humanity’s worst and deadliest escape with the usual pieties.

Sure enough, this annoyed the heck out of some readers. Responding to the emphatic objections of one, Isaac delivered a personal and powerful rebuttal. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post Clayton Lockett Is Dead, Right? Then 1) Good! and 2) His Execution Wasn’t “Botched:” Continue reading →

Clayton Lockett Is Dead, Right? Then 1) Good! and 2) His Execution Wasn’t “Botched”

/ Jack Marshall / 149 Comments

Capital punishment foes have no shame, and (I know I am a broken record on this, and it cheers me no more than it pleases you), the knee-jerk journalists who have been squarely in their camp for decades refuse to illuminate their constant hypocrisy. In Connecticut, for example, holding that putting to death the monstrous perpetrators of the Petit home invasion was “immoral,” anti-death penalty advocates argued that the extended time it took to handle appeals made the death penalty more expensive than life imprisonment—an added expense for which the advocates themselves are accountable.

A similar dynamic is at work in the aftermath of the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.Witnesses to his execution by lethal injection said Lockett convulsed and writhed on the gurney, sat up and started to speak before officials blocked the witnesses’ view by pulling a curtain. Apparently his vein “blew,” and instead of killing him efficiently,  the new, three-drug “cocktail” arrived at as the means of execution in Oklahoma after extensive study and litigation failed to work as advertised.  Why was there an excessively complex system involving multiple drugs used in this execution? It was the result of cumulative efforts by anti-death penalty zealots to make sure the process was above all, “humane.” Of course, the more complicated a process is, the more moving parts it has, the more likely it is to fail.

Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Mail Bag: Rep. Jim Bridenstine and The Duty To Confront

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

A reader asks…

“John McCain and Paul Ryan have corrected constituents who spout conspiracy theories about the President.  Should this Republican have left this town hall comment unchallenged?”

The incident referenced is on view here:

That’s Oklahoma congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) who listens as a woman says, “Obama is not president, as far as I’m concerned.  He should be executed as an enemy combatant…I can’t tell you, or I can’t say because we are in a public place, this guy is a criminal,” and then answers by saying that “everybody knows the lawlessness of this president,” without addressing her more outrageous assertions. “The only way I see out of this is to overwhelmingly change the Senate, so that we can then impeach the SOB,” another woman says. “You know, you look so sweet…” says Bridenstine, deflecting. Continue reading →

From Oklahoma, A Remarkable Ethics Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

hartmanparkinglot_610x458

Young Christian Lunsford was disgusted when he saw the TV report about the mugging of seventy-eight-year-old Tona Herndon of Bethany, Oklahoma, robbed while visiting the gravesite of her husband of 60 years, who had died just two weeks earlier. It wasn’t merely that the mugger took a purse and $700 from a vulnerable and grieving woman, but that the culprit was Christian’s father. He had been quickly arrested, and his mug shot, shown on TV, was all-too-familiar to his fifteen-year-old son. Christian’s parents divorced when he was two, and his contact with his father had been minimal as the elder Lunsford kept ending up in jail. The teen had recently heard from his dad, however, when he sent Christian $250 to pay for his participation in a school band trip.

The latest crime, however, moved Christian to do something exemplary. He contacted Tona Herndon and asked her to meet him in a church parking lot. When she did, he mugged her too, as a tribute to his father.

No, that’s not what happened: I was just messing with you. Continue reading →

This Is The Way It’s Done, Ethics Warriors….Well, ALMOST

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Quit being distracting, Triana...

“Quit being so distracting, Triana…”

Deborah Brown Community School in Tulsa, Oklahoma forbids its students from wearing their hair in dreadlocks, afros “and other faddish styles.” Terrence Parker, a barber, challenged the rule by sending his 7-year-old daughter Tiana to class there wearing her hair in dreadlocks. She was told that she could not attend school with her hair in a (stupid and ignorant) rule-violating style. Tiana is now attending another school, while the story, reported on the web in various sources, is holding the school up to well-earned ridicule for a dress code that if not racist in intent, is racist in impact. Eventually, I would think, the school will be shamed into seeing the error of its ways, which is enforcing an inappropriately narrowly-viewed, culturally-biased interpretation of what constitutes a “presentable” hairstyle as opposed to one that might “distract from the respectful and serious atmosphere [the school] strives for.”

This is the way unethical rules get changed. Parker confronted the rule by violating it, and accepted the penalty while publicizing the unjust rule to the greater community, which is making its disapproval known. Continue reading →

“How To Make An Unethical Apology” by Rev. David Brassfield, Apology Innovator

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

What Rev. Brassfield regards as "Christ-like"

What Rev. Brassfield regards as “Christ-like”

Apologies are fascinating, because they are so seldom honest, benign, sincere, and genuinely contrite. Rev. David Brassfield just submitted one that might serve as a classic in the category of backhanded, insincere, bilious apologies, and a useful template for high-placed jerks in search of inspiration.

Before revealing the good Reverend’s masterpiece, some background is in order. In the  wake of the deadly tornado that devastated the area around Oklahoma City,  Brassfield printed and distributed an attack on local atheist groups to parishioners  attending his Newalla Church of Christ, alleging that they proved their deficits in morality, character and community support by failing to join with various church groups in relief efforts.

He wrote in part,

“….They claim believers in God are blind and only they see the truth. But, in fact, they only see themselves. Helping others is beneath them. Ironically, they greatly resemble a religious group of Jesus’ day: the Jewish leaders, who talked a good game but did nothing. We should dread the day if those who reject God and the church Jesus built become a majority in this land. …If the “proof is in the pudding,” then those anti-God groups have left a bad taste in the world’s mouth. Thanks be to God that because of the love and sacrifice of his son, believers in God have felt compelled to come from all places to give of themselves freely.”

As Emily Litella would say, “Never mind!” The pastor was dead, dead wrong. Local atheist groups had organized, pitched in, and done their part to assist in relief efforts. A humble apology was called for. This is what Reverend produced. As usual, bolded and bracketed asides are me: Continue reading →

Now THIS Is A Legal Ethics Violation!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Horrible text messageJeremy Daniel Oliver, a friendly Oklahoma lawyer specializing in criminal and family law, was recently arrested and charged with the felonies of soliciting sex with a minor and distributing obscene materials via technological means. You see, Oliver offered to knock $1000 off his fee for legal services for a female client…

…in exchange for sex with her, or, in the alternative,

…her 18-year-old-daughter, or, as another option,

… her 13-year-old daughter,

…in a text message sent to his client’s phone

...while deputies were with the mother.

Oh yes…he also sent her a picture of his penis.

This alleged conduct involves several ethics rules, I aver, including those prohibiting a lawyer from breaking significant laws, having sex with clients (though, oddly, there is nothing in the rules prohibiting sex with the daughters of clients), and perhaps most of all, charging unreasonable fees, though to be fair, having not seen the photo of Mr. Oliver’s penis, I can’t say how unreasonable.

As Consumerist’s Vivia Chen would say, “Not cool.”

____________________________

Pointer: ABA Journal

Facts: News OK