Martin Henry

Detective Constable Carey Lyn-Sue has been made to sit persistently on the front page of The Gleaner over his confession of having fabricated evidence in a case he was investigating. Joining him on Monday on the front page and in ethical controversy was Lawman Lynch calling for condoms to be issued in schools.

Both gentlemen have delivered us big ethical dilemmas, as the swirling debates surrounding their utterances so clearly indicate. How to find a resolution is the question.

While church leaders and Cops for Christ have commended the confessing cop, some fellow officers have cursed him and the Police Commissioner has (lawfully, and perhaps not unreasonably) suspended him. The officer, more than most who have joined the debate, seems to clearly understand that there are consequences to moral choices and that doing the 'right' thing does not necessarily remove the conse-quences. All choices, at bottom, are moral/ethical choices. And deciding what is the "right" thing is not always easy or straightforward.

Constable Lyn-Sue, both as a liar and as a confessor, has acted with perhaps noble intentions, as has Lawman Lynch calling for condoms in schools because children are engaging in high-risk sex.

The victim of Lyn-Sue, it must be noted, is not an angel but a convicted criminal already serving a 15-year sentence for an unrelated crime. The officer's apparent intention was to secure a conviction for another serious crime that self-righteous members of the public who could would not provide evidence for. Over the years the police have taken it upon themselves to eliminate by less than due process persons judged to be criminal menaces to society, and have enjoyed in doing so wide tacit support from a relieved and generally grateful but hypocritical public. But even the worse criminal has rights which must not be arbitrarily abrogated.

Among the victims of Lyn-Sue's confession - yes, there are victims - are the comrades in conspiracy, police officers exposed by his confession. He has been labelled a traitor, and from their vantage point he surely is, and accused of damaging, if not destroying careers. To what extent does he have a moral right to damage others to free his own conscience?

He has also brought the entire police force, widely judged to be deeply corrupt, into further disrepute. And from the force's perspective, the commissioner did not have much leeway for granting the carte blanche 'mercy' so many are calling for. And surely, many of Jason's family and friends (his forgiving Christian mother excepted) firmly believe that a show of mercy would be quite unwarranted.

So Lyn-Sue, converted to Christian faith, was pushed between the devil and the deep blue sea by his conscience. Leaving his lie to stand would have had significant conse-quences. Confessing his lie has had, and will continue to have, its own serious consequences for others and for himself. People have generally agreed or disagreed with his confession on the grounds of whose or what interest their own position leads them to defend, an ethics of consequences, not of principle.

And this is exactly the point of departure of Lawman's condom ethics. Incidentally, Lynch is in the media acknowledging that he has tapes of 'forced' sex and possible underaged sex. The police ought to have an interest in the matter. So children are having sex. Sex may lead to disease and pregnancy. Let's arm them with condoms. Utilitarian ethics.

Taken to its logical absurd conclusion, reductio ad absurdum, whatever people choose to do that they will not readily desist from doing, society should simply provide means of minimising consequences. But that approach, too, has its own consequences and has never been sanctioned in law anywhere in the world, even in the most liberal society. Some of the most horrendous consequences to modern and future society are from the progressive deregulation of sex.

Guided by deep moral principle, which ultimately cannot be human-designed, and weighing the consequences o choices are critical elements of an intelligent ethics which can help us through the kinds of dilemmas which Constable Lyn-Sue must have faced, and which Lawman Lynch is thrusting upon us. And often, the third way, the middle way, is the better way out of ethical dilemmas.