All questions are worth 20 points:
- If you are an attorney, is there a point where nonlegal moral considerations supersede your ethical commitment to your client? If you were a defense lawyer and your client was innocent, but you could not prove it, would you violate ethical barriers in service to your client?
- Are the following actions of a prosecutor legal? Are they ethical? Explain your answers.
- Authorizing the arrest of one brother for drugs (knowing the young man would lose a scholarship to college), even though the prosecutor knows the charge would be thrown out, in order to have leverage so that he would give evidence against his brother.
- Announcing a suspect of a drive-by shooting to the media so that the offender is in danger from the rival gang members, and then offering protective custody only if the man will plead guilty.
- Authorizing the arrest of a ten-year-old boy who confessed to a crime, even though there was no serious possibility that he was guilty, in order to pressure a relative to confess.
- Identify one type of judicial misconduct and provide a real life example of a judge participating in misconduct.
- How would you rule? Assume you are a judge who must sentence the following people:
a). A young woman who was forced into drug use and sales by her stepfather, who had been sexually abusing with her since she was eleven. b) A father who killed the man who molested his child. c) An honors college student who drank at a fraternity rush party, drove back to the dorm, and on the way, ran over a pedestrian.
- A poor single mother who embezzled money from her employer to pay for her child’s needed surgery because the employer did not provide health insurance.
- Do you support capital punishment? Provide arguments supporting your view. Are your arguments utilitarian or from some other ethical system and if so which system?
