Free Speech at Funerals or Unethcial behavior? In Ethics where do you draw the line?

Is it possible that what is ethical behavior for one person or group is unethical to another?  Now the question doesn’t relate to dramatically different cultures – the question relates to Americans vs Americans.  Beyond the issue of ethics – the question of law is being raised today related to that very issue.

According to a CNN news report:

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a legal battle that pits the privacy rights of grieving families and the free speech rights of demonstrators.

In 2006, members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested 300 feet from a funeral for Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Maryland, carrying signs reading “God hates you” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

Among the teachings of the Topeka, Kansas-based fundamentalist church founded by pastor Fred Phelps is the belief that the deaths of U.S. soldiers is God’s punishment for “the sin of homosexuality.”

Albert Snyder, Matthew’s father, said his son was not gay and the protesters should not have been at the funeral.

The case centers on Free Speech and whether the members of the church have the right to express their opinions at the funeral(s) of US Servicemen.  My question focuses not so much on the legality of the issue, but more on the ethics of their choices.

ETHICS defined is that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.

So here’s the question:

Is the free expression of a religious belief that interferes with comfort associated with a dignified funeral an “ethical” action?  If not, how does one reconcile ethics on one hand with free speech on the other?

Chime in and register your opinion!

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME

“Honest-Services Fraud” law – taking ethics and fraud deterrence too far?

Is it possible that in our quest for improved ethics and fraud deterrence that we’ve created a capture net that is too broad and too easy to be caught in?

Years ago I spent time in federal prison.  I am not proud of that fact, but it’s a fact that I cannot change.  Like Bernie Madoff, I defrauded clients (through the creation of a Ponzi scheme) and, when the card was pulled from the house of cards I created, I found myself facing that dreaded walk into federal prison.  Those 23 steps from the curb into federal prison were the longest 23 steps of my life.

Yet, while I was there…(as you can imagine) I became acquainted with many folks – most of whom had, in fact, done the crime.  They, like I, were paying the price for our crimes by doing the time (so to speak).  From that experience, one thing I learned was the broad sweeping power to convict of the word – CONSPIRACY.

It became clear that the government could use CONSPIRACY laws to capture “would be” criminals or make it easy to win convictions for those who committed crime, but otherwise would walk. Now it would appear that the broad bush word CONSPIRACY has been replaced with an even broader bush (or criminal capture net) called “HONEST SERVICES.”

HERE’S THE CONCEPT – according to an article in Fortune Magazine:

If a judge or governor accepts bribes, for instance, he is not necessarily stealing money from anyone, but he is depriving the public of the “honest services” they have a right to expect from him. Likewise, if a corporate purchasing officer accepts secret kickbacks from vendors, he’s depriving his employer of his “honest services.”

“Look around at all the high-profile cases today,” says Richard Craig Smith, a former federal prosecutor now with the law firm Fulbright & Jaworski. “Ninety-five percent of them are charged under honest-services fraud. That’s not just an accident.”

In fact, recent defendants in such cases compose a white-collar rogues’ gallery for our times, featuring such tarnished luminaries as former governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois; former U.S. congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana; newspaper magnate and former Hollinger International CEO Conrad Black; lobbyist Jack Abramoff; and former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling.

HERE’S THE RUB – Just about anything that someone might perceive as wrong could be captured with the very wide net of the “Honest-Services” doctrine.  The Fortune article goes on to say:  “The feature that prosecutors love about honest-services fraud is precisely what critics say dooms it constitutionally: its nearly infinite adaptability. “There’s almost no fact pattern that cannot be fit around 1346,” says Smith, referring to the section of Title 18 of the U.S. Code that defines the offense. Read literally, it seems broad enough to catch any deceit at all. If so, then who among us is not guilty?”

If the law is so vague, broad and ill defined that you could commit a crime without knowing that you’ve committed one…then it is possible that the law that prosecutors love could be struck down as unconstitutional.  In fact thee are two cases before the Supreme Court on that very issue.

The law “invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators, and corporate CEOs who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct,” wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  “Carried to its logical conclusion,” he continued, it “also renders criminal a state legislator’s decision to vote for a bill because he expects it will curry favor with a small minority essential to his reelection; a mayor’s attempt to use the prestige of his office to obtain a restaurant table without a reservation; [or] a salaried employee’s phoning in sick to go to a ball game.”

“If you defraud someone out of money,” explains Susan Necheles, a white-collar defense lawyer at New York’s Hafetz & Necheles, “there’s clearly a crime, and there are plenty of statutes that cover it. When the government resorts to honest-services fraud, on the other hand, it’s almost always because there’s a real question whether this was a crime or just aggressive business behavior.”

SO HERE’S THE QUESTION:

As an ethics and fraud prevention speaker, I wonder, in the governments efforts to rein in fraud – have they gone too far in their efforts to broadly define “Honest-Services” for purposes of prosecuting and convicting those accused of (shall we say) “ethical” crimes?  The Fortune Magazine article provides an outstanding framework for this law’s background (read here).

In December the Supreme Court signaled, hearing an “Honest Services” case that the law was ambiguous and therefore likely to be struck down.  “A citizen is supposed to be able to understand the criminal law,” Breyer said, yet it was unclear what the law in question branded as a crime.

Early next year, the justices will hear a third case testing the honest-services fraud law, brought by former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling.  The justices hinted that they would put off ruling on the issue until they had considered Skilling’s case, since his lawyers argued most directly that the entire law should be thrown out as too vague.

QUESTION:  Do you feel that this statute should be struck down for being too vague?  If so, what should replace it?

COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!