This is a stupid question, but please take it seriously

[Huckleman2000]

I'm watching Larry King interviewing Kenny-boy Lay, on a re-broadcast of an earlier interview.

I have to say, he seems like a credible sort of guy, although he's not what I would call a man of principle. He does seem to know a lot about a lot of business stuff.

Here's the thing that rattled me:

Early in the interview, Larry asked him about wrongdoing, and he answered that he didn't think he'd done anything wrong, "certainly not anything criminally wrong". Something like that, I didn't write it down right away.

What struck me was, how do we reconcile our wrongdoing, even if it's not "criminally wrong"? Does the fact that it doesn't break a law make all behavior legitimate? If we don't break a law, what level of social sanction is appropriate?

How do we view others' choices in this matter?

I know that I had painful disagreements with Colly over President Clinton's behavior. I can't justify it easily, but I don't think he was treated fairly. Colly wouldn't accept that, and I have to respect that even if I don't agree with it.

Now there are situations where the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak. I miss Colly's input here, since she was a person of principle, and could at least provide a point of view that was coherent within her beliefs. I don't know that I'd agree with her outright, but she could construct an argument that made sense off the bat, and I valued that. I don't want to make this an "I miss Colly" thread, but I can't raise these issues without at least remembering her contributions. These things are inextricably linked in my mind.

So, Where do we draw lines between unethical and illegal?

 

[Tom Collins]

Huck, I think we all miss Colly for the reason you've stated, among others, of course. Can anyone open, or post on, a political thread without atleast thinking how much they miss her? I think not, and there is no shame in missing a worthy adversary/teacher. Honor, only, can be found in such a feeling.

On to your question.

I don't know if my sentiment is normal/common/popular, but it's how I feel. In simplest terms, "Do no harm." If what you do does no harm to anyone then you have every right to do it. by harm, I don't mean some old bitch in her 90s or so Bible thumper who say, "You getting drunk in the privacy of your own home hurts me bacuse you'll go to hell for it." What I mean is "I'm your wife/child. You're an alcoholic, and the things you do while drunk damage me physically/psycially."

Another goiod way of putting how I feel would be, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." vs "Do unto others before they do unto you."

I maybe nieve, but I honestly believe that if we could completely live by this then we wouldn't need the fucked up laws that we've collected over the years.

I admit that I don't follow the news and I pay even less attention to what all the stupid politians are doing. There's only one question in my mine. Did he do something that honestly harmed someone? If not, then leave him be. That doesn't mean, of course, that he's the right person for any political office. If he can't follow the laws of the land...even the unwritten ones...then he has no buisness representing anyone but scouldrels.

 

[rgraham666]

Nicely said, Tom. One of the lights I live by is, "There's enough pain in the universe without me adding to the sum total".

Kenny Boy caused a lot of pain. Investors got fucked over, employees lost everything. And it was a deliberate act on his and his cronies part. They had to know all the myriad things they were doing would collapse on them. They didn't care because they thought they personally would come out smelling like roses. And in my opinion they didn't worry about the law because they thought the law didn't apply to them. They thought their connections in the political world would shield them. I'm glad that for once they were wrong.

But, in my opinion, the whole Enron affair shows how psychopathy is a valued character trait in the upper echelons of our society. Understandable. You can become much more successful if you're never bothered by pangs of conscience.

 

[Antfarmer77]

Honor and integrity have pretty much fallen by the wayside. Money and celebrity have taken their place. It's sad really, but there's not much you can do aside from doing what you consider right, it's your face you have to look at in the morning mirror. But I guess if you have no conscience (sp) that wouldn't matter anyhow.

 

[Huckleman2000]

...
But, in my opinion, the whole Enron affair shows how psychopathy is a valued character trait in the upper echelons of our society. Understandable. You can become much more successful if you're never bothered by pangs of conscience.

Thanks, Rob. I think I feel the same way. It was very unnerving to see him speaking 'from beyond the grave', in such a reasonable manner. I read that he became quite agitated on the witness stand, and Larry King isn't exactly the toughest interview anyone is going to have to face.

What concerns me is that there are many instances that aren't as stark as Enron. As you say, being a psychopath doesn't seem to be an impediment to climbing the corporate ladder - quite the opposite.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Honor and integrity have pretty much fallen by the wayside. Money and celebrity have taken their place. It's sad really, but there's not much you can do aside from doing what you consider right, it's your face you have to look at in the morning mirror. But I guess if you have no conscience (sp) that wouldn't matter anyhow.

That may be a bit too pessimistic. There is probably a more or less fixed quantity of honor, principle and unscrupulous in the general population at any given time. The key is to get the incentives right in the society to reward the first two but not the third. This may be a slight contradiction, but another aspect is human weakness, and how a person who might behave honorably and with principle in most situations will fall sway to unscrupulousness if the incentives are not right and the temptations are there. Our capacity for self-justification seems to be boundless.
"Deliver us from evil . . ."
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The law and morality are two different things. Just because it's not against any specific law does not make it morally right. As said by several in other posts, "Honor" has given way to greed. And this doesn't just apply to the Ken Lay's of the world. Greed has spread through our society like a cancer.

I am amoung those as Tom and Roxanne, if you do no harm to me or anyone else, then do what you think is right. But if it will harm others, even several years down the road, then you better not. Of course an arrogant person maybe believe they are better than I, at least until they are before a judge being sentenced to a long, unpleasant prison term.

 

[The_Fool]

I so love the smell of ethics in the morning.....


Being ethical in a business environment means doing the right thing when you can get caught.

Being legal is a doing the right thing when there is no other way of creating plausible deniability.

Being profit-aware is ignoring the top two rules when the ability to make money far outways the risk of being caught, or the profit made will offset the cost of the lawyers.

 

[Pure]

good questions, huck,

H: Early in the interview, Larry asked him about wrongdoing, and he answered that he didn't think he'd done anything wrong, "certainly not anything criminally wrong". Something like that, I didn't write it down right away.

What struck me was, how do we reconcile our wrongdoing, even if it's not "criminally wrong"? Does the fact that it doesn't break a law make all behavior legitimate? If we don't break a law, what level of social sanction is appropriate?

Our criminal laws are supposed to be a kind of minimum standard as to what is prohibited. Unfortunately, as Marx and other have pointed out, the laws are drafted by the fatcats, the friends of Lay, to use a gross oversimplification. Hence many extremely antisocial acts have no or minimal penalty**; hence 'taking' (through fraudulent 'investment opportunity') many people's life savings is generally not illegal. Another example: The acts or omissions of Chertoff and M. Brown cost many lives, yet bear no real penalty.

Huck, as you say, psychopathy is corporate wisdom and savoir faire, both for the officers and for the corporation as a whole. the standard sets of capitalist laws (e.g. US, 1900) leave it an option for a corporation to behave (in any way) honorably or pro-socially. further they have to odd result of correct behavior, but for the wrong reasons (i'm thinking of the early Heinz story).

Many societies DONT distinguish morals from laws, e.g. in the traditional Islamic or in the Calvinist Puritans of New England, who simply put the 10 C on the books as laws. The 'man on the street' still thinks this way, to a large extent.

"Our" or the mainstream view now is that certain promises do not create enough socially significant harm [for breaking them] to warrant a criminal sanction. For instance, enticing a girl to have sex by promising marriage. "We" say, "ok, she was disappointed, but society is not going to take an interest in that 'harm.' "

Promises around money often involve criminal sanction, though, for instance, simple 'bad debt' is NOW only a civil matter (you used to be jailable for debt).

so now there is this area of 'personal morality.' rg says for him it's not adding to the suffereing of the universe. that's a fairly tall order
(every piece of beef or chicken he eats adds to that!).

i'd say it's to do with being true to your friends, and responsible to them. (with the clarification that one's sex partners are not necessarily one's friends). i don't know enough about Kenny L to assess him in this area, but he was reasonably true to his cronies.
---

**in Roxanne's terms, above, these laws created no incentive for honorable corporate behavior. (i'm presuming there isn't much of such incentive to begin with.)

 

[Huckleman2000]

I so love the smell of ethics in the morning.....

Being ethical in a business environment means doing the right thing when you can get caught.

Being legal is a doing the right thing when there is no other way of creating plausible deniability.

Being profit-aware is ignoring the top two rules when the ability to make money far outways the risk of being caught, or the profit made will offset the cost of the lawyers.

This appears to be the calculus made by the mining industry, at least over the last several years of mining accidents.

I think it's more than getting the incentives right - there have to be some strong disincentives as well.

 

[BlackShanglan]

The law and morality are two different things. Just because it's not against any specific law does not make it morally right. As said by several in other posts, "Honor" has given way to greed. And this doesn't just apply to the Ken Lay's of the world. Greed has spread through our society like a cancer.

I agree, and I would add to this an increasingly legalistic "plausible deniability" approach to one's behavior. I think, Huck, that that was what disturbed me with Clinton. Regardless of whether his behavior was legal or illegal, it was clearly wrong for him to be on the phone with the president of Mexico while receiving a blowjob from an intern. His attempts to avoid the issue frustrated me largely because of that. Someone who said - as I think the governor of New Jersey recently did? - "What I did was wrong. I am ashamed, I am sorry, and I will strive never to do it again. I ask for forgiveness." would have my respect. I don't think that people have to be perfect. What to me spoke very poorly of Clinton's character was not merely his unethical sexual relationship with a subordinate (and I do feel very strongly that that was highly improper and immoral), but his decision, when faced with that issue, to play "what do you mean by the word 'is'?" games with whether he had, in the most narrowly legalistic and personally beneficial meaning of all possible terms, committed an actual crime. It suggested an inherent rejection of personal responsibility, ethics, and moral standards, and that to me was what destroyed any respect I might have had for him. I feel the same way about Lay and about others who take the same road; once you're busy arguing that by your lawyers' most optimistic interpretation of the law, you should not technically be arrested for what you've done, in my opinion you have long since bid farewell to any real personal morals or ethics. At that point, you're just concentrating on avoiding any repercussions.

Tom's definition - "do no harm" - is an interesting one to me. In theory I like it, and I like the way he applies it - generously and with thought to the many types of harm and good one can do. My hesitation is that in the past, I've seen it applied in very self-serving ways that ultimately meant something more like "don't think very hard about the consequences of your actions, and so long as no one is dead or bleeding, it's all good." I suppose that I would add to "do no harm" something like "take no advantage." It's always easy for a wealthy man in a position of power and privilege to argue that he did no real harm in banging his young intern, because any possible harm to her long-term happiness is so distant and unactualized at that moment that he can easily say that he sees no obvious harm. Taking advantage, however, I think ultimately wrong in and of itself, whether it's the 36-year-old with a flash car and a taste for barely legal girls or the grocer selling ice at $25 per bag after a hurricane. Turning another's weakness, need, or lack of knowledge to our own profit I think teaches us to scorn mercy and seek only our own self-interest.

Shanglan

 

[rgraham666]

Interesting, Shang. That bit about the governor saying he'd made a mistake and asking for forgiveness caught my attention.

My favourite authour points out we live in a society that allows for no error.

Partly it's because we are a society of experts. And one of the unspoken things about being an expert is that in your field of expertise you can never be wrong.

And partly it's because our egos are tied up in the power our expertise grants us. If we were wrong we are obviously not expert and therefore have no right to our power. And since so many of us hold up our egos with our power the idea of error becomes an impossibility.

The problem is that when you can't make mistakes, you can't be careful either. So more mistakes are made as people never stop to think about what they're doing.

One of those little conundrums of the universe that isn't logical, but is true.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Rob -

I think that part of responsibility has to be forgiveness. I believe you're right that a culture of perfectionism is tied to some extent to lack of responsibility. So long as no one is allowed to make any sort of error, people will respond to that very unreasonable demand by trying to hide, deny, or obfuscate the errors they make. I do think that some errors must result in punishment; an elected official who takes bribes to influence his decisions, for instance, must be put out of office because he's violated the tenets of the position itself. However, I do think that there has to be a middle ground in which one says, "You're not an ideal role model in that wrong behavior, but you've done the decent thing in owning to it and accepting the shame that attaches to it, and your actions do not show that you are incapable of serving in the position you occupy. If you make serious efforts to atone for that failing and if you don't repeat it, we can accept that."

Shanglan

 

[rgraham666]

I agree, Shang. It is good to forgive someone when they make a mistake.

Unfortunately, we North Americans, in my opinion, aren't very good at forgiveness.

 

[Pure]

just a small quibble, shang,

[Clinton's focus on whether] he had, in the most narrowly legalistic and personally beneficial meaning of all possible terms, committed an actual crime.

i think, Shang, when you are accused of a crime, you will suddenly get 'narrowly legalistic', etc. laypersons--of whom i'm one--tend, unless it's them, to insufficiently appreciate the niceties of law.

our pop culture is very dismissive of those who 'get off on a technicality.' e.g. i'm accused of sex with someone under 16, and she in fact turned 16 that day. that strikes some--unless they're accused-- as a 'technicality' and 'nit picking.' around here, a person(1) who wrote an essay for another(2), which the other submitted with his (2's) name, was accused of 'forgery.' the judge threw it out.

 

[Huckleman2000]

The thing about Clinton was (is), the blowjobs weren't the crime. And as for legal nitpicking, Ken Starr setting a perjury trap while leaking grand jury testimony like a sieve is hardly my idea of moral rectitude. And by what moral standards does getting a blowjob from an intern, something that must happen to someone or other about fifty times a day in Washington DC, rise to a national priority because it happened in the Oval Office, while floating the idea in the same place to paint a spy plane in UN colors to attract fire in order to justify starting a war does not?

These are the sorts of moral vs. legal "dilemmas" that just don't seem to get a reasonable hearing.

 

[BlackShanglan]

[Clinton's focus on whether] he had, in the most narrowly legalistic and personally beneficial meaning of all possible terms, committed an actual crime.

i think, Shang, when you are accused of a crime, you will suddenly get 'narrowly legalistic', etc. laypersons--of whom i'm one--tend, unless it's them, to insufficiently appreciate the niceties of law.

our pop culture is very dismissive of those who 'get off on a technicality.' e.g. i'm accused of sex with someone under 16, and she in fact turned 16 that day. that strikes some--unless they're accused-- as a 'technicality' and 'nit picking.' around here, a person(1) who wrote an essay for another(2), which the other submitted with his (2's) name, was accused of 'forgery.' the judge threw it out.

Sorry, I should have clarified the context in which I was speaking. Legal technicalities are very useful things in a court. If I am accused of a crime and have not committed it, I shall probably defend myself - unless I happen to have done enough to merit the punishment whether I met the legal conditions or not. If, for instance, I was driving drunk, knew I was drunk, and caused an accident, I hope and pray that I would have the strength of character to plead guilty even if the officer at the scene lacked a Breathalyzer and they were not able to test me until some time later when my blood alcohol reading was just below the legal limit. That they could not technically prove me guilty of a crime would do nothing, in my opinion, to lessen my responsibility, and I pray that I could do the right thing and accept that responsibility. Of course, I also pray never to do such a wretched thing in the first place.

So with Clinton. I don't mind him arguing that he should not be sent to jail; that's quite appropriate when one has not committed a crime. However, I cannot respect his extension of that "not guilty" from a court of law to a general approbation for his actions. The only reason he was stung on the perjury issue to start with was his desire not to admit to a failing that, while not a crime, was a serious moral and ethical lapse, and one for which he desired not to take any responsibility. If it's not a crime but it is reprehensible, then the appropriate answer is "I did do this, it is reprehensible, and I am ashamed, but I do not feel that I should go to prison for it" - not "I didn't do it, so long as I get to carefully and individually define the words 'I,' 'do,' and 'it,' and so long as no one has any physical evidence inarguably proving that I might have."

Shanglan

ETA: And, again - the same for Mr. Lay. This is not, to me, a political party issue. I'm thinking of it in terms of Huck's initial question about ethics, morality, and legality. Legal technicalities are fine if the only standard one has is what is or is not legally actionable, but I believe that morality and ethics must push beyond that if one is to be a person of real character.

 

[JamesSD]

So, Where do we draw lines between unethical and illegal?

There are plenty of things that are unethical that are not and should not be illegal. Cheating on one's girlfriend/boyfriend for example (husbands and wives get a little more complicated).

Ethics also allows for gray areas. The Law, at least ideally, is The Law. There may be gray areas in sentencing or what exact crime someone commits, but at the end of the day, it's a yes or no question, and ideally gets an answer.

 

[Pure]

hi james, -note to Shang

There are plenty of things that are unethical that are not and should not be illegal. Cheating on one's girlfriend/boyfriend for example (husbands and wives get a little more complicated).


but james, even *having* a boyfriend is illegal in certain places (ever hear of 'death of a princess', the BBC movie). adultery certainly also has been illegal in a number of places, including the US and Canada.

heck up here in Canada we even had a crime, 'criminal conversation,' which is committed when a man persuades a married (to another) woman to have sex with him!

i know and sympathize with the general point: if i break a promise to the tax man, i get charged, but if i break a promise to my kid to read a story, i do NOT commit a crime, but maybe am 'immoral.'

here's a little puzzle for you, on this topic:

you find a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk, outside the police station.
let's assume it's legal to keep it. wouldn't it be 'moral' to turn it in? would you? (let us further assume ftsoa, that unclaimed monies are simply donated to the policemen's widow's fund, i.e., you won't get it back, if it's unclaimed.)

i do agree with the 'moral' course for a related scenario--suppose a guest--an acquaintance of a friend-- leaves a book at my house. i think there is no legal obligation to track him down and return it. but i do accept a moral obligation to do so, or at least attempt it.

===
shang,

that's an interesting scenario about drunk driving. let me add a little wrinkle, however. you were driving drunk. you were caught, and breathalyzer sample taken, which showed you over the limit. no one was hurt. HOWEVER, here, the law specifies that the policeman taking the sample MUST also take a second sample to be held for independent testing (e.g. by the lab hired by a defendant). this was not done. NOW, the case against you is presented, without a hitch, this crucial fact remaining undisclosed. BUT now it's your lawyer's turn; all he has to do is ask for the second sample, and the prosecution's case will collapse (because police breached the legal procedure). do you instruct him to keep quiet on this and simply present no defense (insuring your conviction)?

how about this slight variation. your home is searched and some thing illegal found. BUT the search warrant was improper (the police signed for the judge, on the paper). you DID have an illegal item, so would you instruct your lawyer NOT to challenge the warrant?

 

[Huckleman2000]

===
shang,

that's an interesting scenario about drunk driving. let me add a little wrinkle, however. you were driving drunk. you were caught, and breathalyzer sample taken, which showed you over the limit. no one was hurt. HOWEVER, here, the law specifies that the policeman taking the sample MUST also take a second sample to be held for independent testing (e.g. by the lab hired by a defendant). this was not done. NOW, the case against you is presented, without a hitch, this crucial fact remaining undisclosed. BUT now it's your lawyer's turn; all he has to do is ask for the second sample, and the prosecution's case will collapse (because police breached the legal procedure). do you instruct him to keep quiet on this and simply present no defense (insuring your conviction)?

how about this slight variation. your home is searched and some thing illegal found. BUT the search warrant was improper (the police signed for the judge, on the paper). you DID have an illegal item, so would you instruct your lawyer NOT to challenge the warrant?

Interesting take! I must admit, this has turned out not to be as stupid a question as I thought at first. Of course there are legal 'technicalities', but these weren't put there simply to trip up law enforcement. They were enacted to prevent abuse by the authorities, which is a moral intent. And lawyers have a professional responsibility to provide a strong and legal defense - I don't know if that's moral, per se, but it smacks of a certain integrity. One I'm not sure I understand, but I think I generally respect.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Oddly enough, I ran across this on Slate tonight. It seems apropos:

The Case of the Unpaid Parking Ticket
Why some people cheat, and others don't.
By Tim Harford
Posted Saturday, July 8, 2006, at 7:10 AM ET

If you want to be rich, you can try to build a brilliantly successful company. Or you can steal. The corruption watchdog Transparency International has estimated that Gen. Suharto embezzled up to $35 billion while president of Indonesia, a figure that is in the same league as the entrepreneurial fortunes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

On a humbler scale, we all face the same choice. We can try to earn money by doing something useful, or we can try to steal or extort it from other people. A society where most people are doing something useful has a good chance of being rich; a society full of corruption will be poor.

That is a glib enough explanation of wealth and poverty, but it is surely just the start of the story. What causes corruption? Many economists believe that corruption is a response to perverse incentives. For example, in Indonesia it takes 151 days to legally establish a small business, according to the World Bank's "Doing Business" database. This is a large incentive to pay bribes or keep a business unregistered. It is not surprising that there is a strong correlation between red tape and corruption. In general, the harder it is to make money legally, the more tempting it will be to do so illegally; and if people are not punished for stealing, then they will be more likely to steal.

The view that incentives are paramount suggests that if you take a person from a poor, corrupt economy and move him to a richer, less corrupt economy, he will live up to the new system that surrounds him. William Lewis of the McKinsey Global Institute has pointed out that illiterate Mexican workers on building sites in Houston are as productive as any construction worker in the world. The Mexicans are perfectly capable of living up to the potential of the American system.

That is a mainstream economist's view. An alternative view, popular among the common-sense crowd, is that corruption is a problem in Indonesia because Indonesians are crooks by nature. Poor countries are poor not because of their economic system, but because they are full of people who are lazy or stupid or dishonest.

I disagree out of faith, rather than because the evidence is compelling. But then, what evidence could there be? You would need to take people from every culture on earth, put them somewhere where they could ignore the law with impunity, and see who cheated and who was honest. That sounds like a tall order for any research strategy, but economists Ray Fisman and Edward Miguel have realized that diplomats in New York City were, in fact, the perfect guinea pigs. Diplomatic immunity meant that parking tickets issued to diplomats could not be enforced, and so parking legally was essentially a matter of personal ethics.

Fisman and Miguel discovered support for the common-sense view. Countries with corrupt systems, as measured by Transparency International, also sent diplomats who parked illegally. From 1997-2005, the famously incorruptible Scandinavians committed only 12 unpaid parking violations, and most of them were by a single criminal mastermind from Finland. But over the same period of time, Chad and Bangladesh, regularly at the top of the corruption tables, managed to produce more than 2,500 violations between them. Perhaps poor countries are poor because they are full of corrupt people, after all.

It's a very clever piece of work, but I will not be abandoning my faith in economic incentives just yet. In 2002 the Clinton-Schumer Amendment gave New York City much greater power to punish diplomatic parking violations: Cars were towed, permits suspended, and fines collected from the relevant foreign-aid budget. Unpaid violations immediately fell 90 percent. When it comes to parking violations, personal morality matters, but incentives matter more.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Pure, I am enjoying your hypotheticals so make that I stole James's as well. Here you are -

here's a little puzzle for you, on this topic:

you find a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk, outside the police station.
let's assume it's legal to keep it. wouldn't it be 'moral' to turn it in? would you? (let us further assume ftsoa, that unclaimed monies are simply donated to the policemen's widow's fund, i.e., you won't get it back, if it's unclaimed.)

i do agree with the 'moral' course for a related scenario--suppose a guest--an acquaintance of a friend-- leaves a book at my house. i think there is no legal obligation to track him down and return it. but i do accept a moral obligation to do so, or at least attempt it.

I think the moral obligation in both cases is on me to attempt to return the money, and I would do so. Obviously, in the case of a friend's book, I know to whom to return it. In the case of the twenty dollars, if I can't find to whom it belongs, personally I would turn it in to the police station - but I will confess that the proximity to the station counts for something in this case, as I am not likely to drive several miles across town given that the owner of the money is not likely to look there. If I can't figure out whose property the money is, I'd personally prefer to turn it in on the grounds that I don't need $20 as much as the widow of an officer killed in the line of duty does, but I would not think it immoral for someone in greater need to keep the money. I think the key thing in this example is the apparent (and correct me if I am wrong) potential for getting the money back to the person it belongs to. Given that it's outside of the police station, I would normally take it in because it seems most likely that the person who lost it is in there somewhere. But if there were no real odds of finding the owner - if, for instance, I found the money buried in gunk in a gutter, obviously there for some time - then there's no one to whom I could restore it, and I think I could morally look on my find as simple luck for me.

shang,

that's an interesting scenario about drunk driving. let me add a little wrinkle, however. you were driving drunk. you were caught, and breathalyzer sample taken, which showed you over the limit. no one was hurt. HOWEVER, here, the law specifies that the policeman taking the sample MUST also take a second sample to be held for independent testing (e.g. by the lab hired by a defendant). this was not done. NOW, the case against you is presented, without a hitch, this crucial fact remaining undisclosed. BUT now it's your lawyer's turn; all he has to do is ask for the second sample, and the prosecution's case will collapse (because police breached the legal procedure). do you instruct him to keep quiet on this and simply present no defense (insuring your conviction)?

If I felt that the police testing was indeed accurate, I would hope I would have the strength of character to present no defense. As I read this example, I was guilty of the crime; I think that the moral and ethical choice is to accept the consequences.

how about this slight variation. your home is searched and some thing illegal found. BUT the search warrant was improper (the police signed for the judge, on the paper). you DID have an illegal item, so would you instruct your lawyer NOT to challenge the warrant?

Again, I would hope that I would do this. I believe it the moral and ethical course. If I felt that it was unreasonable that the object was illegal, I would fight and campaign to have the law changed and/or my sentence reduced, but I would not deny the existence of the item, or so I hope. I know that our morals and ethics are put to a very severe test when we must make great sacrifices for them, and so I say "I hope" because I don't wish to suggest that I am some unswerving paragon of virtue to whom the threat of prison means nothing. But I know what would be right, and I hope that I would have the strength to do it. Whether I did or not, my actions would not change my belief about what course of action would be ethical and moral.

Shanglan