Legal Ethics

Is It Wrong To Ask Offenders To Give Blood To Get Out Of Their Fines?

The outrage over the judge who "ordered" poor offenders to give blood misses the point entirely.

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Just in time for Halloween, let’s talk about the “Vampire Judge of Alabama.”

Judge Marvin Wiggins of Perry County, Alabama is getting a lot of flack for offering to forgive $100 worth of fines for offenders willing to donate blood to a blood drive. No less an authority than the Southern Poverty Law Center has weighed in, filing an ethics complaint against Judge Wiggins, labeling the whole affair unconstitutional.

This is all kinds of stupid. There’s nothing wrong with what Judge Wiggins did and everyone needs to chill the hell out.

First of all, let’s not let the bloody nature of this matter distract from the real issue: the policy of nickle and diming poor and working class people by slapping fines on mostly victimless transgressions is a travesty designed to maintain a permanent underclass through legalized bullying. Full stop. One of the offenders in Judge Wiggins’s courtroom on that fateful day owed thousands of dollars he didn’t have because of a 17-year-old pot conviction! If you’re in the mood to protest something, kindly direct your moral outrage at this.

But rather than take a stand against a criminal justice system run amok, we’re treated to all sorts of pearl clutching because the judge “ordered” people to give blood. As though throwing them in modern Debtor’s prison would be totally acceptable.

“What happened is wrong in about 3,000 ways,” said Arthur L. Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, part of New York University. “You’re basically sentencing someone to an invasive procedure that doesn’t benefit them and isn’t protecting the public health.”

By “basically” he means “not at all.” To be clear, Judge Wiggins saw a room full of offenders that the system wanted further impoverished or thrown in jail (or both) and offered to forgive their debts in exchange for community service. He didn’t sentence them to give blood, he offered an alternative to the sentence he was bound by a misguided legislature to impose. If he’d told everyone to clean up the highway no one would have batted an eye, so how does asking them to donate blood transform this into an ethical crisis? You know what else is an invasive procedure that doesn’t benefit non-violent offenders or protect public health? Jail.

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There’s just nothing special about “blood” that should get people in an uproar. It’s not even a novel solution:

In the mid-20th century, judges in several places around the country, including Honolulu after the Pearl Harbor attack, ordered people convicted of traffic violations to give blood or offered blood donations as an alternative to a fine. More commonly, prisoners would receive cash incentives or reduced sentences for giving blood. (As late as 2008, a judge in Broward County, Fla., offered traffic offenders the choice of a fine, community service or a blood donation.)

However, since we can’t have nice things, all the blood went to waste.

[Jill Evans, a vice president for LifeSouth Community Blood Centers] said that after receiving a complaint, LifeSouth quarantined and tested the blood, tried to contact all the donors and eventually discarded nearly all of the blood units collected.

Wait, “… after receiving a complaint, LifeSouth quarantined and tested the blood”? Do they not test the blood unless there’s a complaint? This seems like a much more pressing ethical issue than whether some kid gets out of a jaywalking ticket a pint lighter and a cookie richer. Especially when you catch this throwaway line about the good people at LifeSouth, “which had recently lost a $4 million judgment for an H.I.V.-tainted blood transfusion.” Yeah, maybe go ahead and test those donations.

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So good for Judge Wiggins for trying to make the best of a terrible situation. I guess in modern vampire lingo this makes me “Team Wiggins.”

For Offenders Who Can’t Pay, It’s a Pint of Blood or Jail Time [NY Times]

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