On April 4, 2015, South Carolina police officer Michael T. Slager shot and killed Walter Scott following a routine traffic stop. The now infamous video which surfaced following the shooting shows an unarmed man being shot multiple times in the back while he was running away. Following the shooting, a crowdfunding campaign was started on GoFundMe.com in order to support the officer’s legal defense fund. However, the campaign was shortly thereafter removed from the website, with officials from the website reporting that the campaign violated its terms of service. While the officials never specifically delineated what violation occurred, GoFundMe’s terms and conditions page states that “campaigns in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts” are prohibited.
The ethics of GoFundMe’s prohibition were relatively straightforward. The website determined the campaign itself was supporting an unethical cause and was prohibited. But attorneys seeking money through crowdfunding must consider a whole host of more nuanced and complicated ethical concerns, as the introduction of third-party money will often conflict with myriad duties attorneys owe to clients.
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