Here’s a modern-day Confucian morality tale from the NYT:

The three brothers quickly gathered in their small town’s empty fire
station to compare notes on the photographs they had happened across on
the Internet.

In horror, the three agreed
that the older man in the dust mask, dark glasses and golf shirt in the
surveillance photos of a string of bank robberies across downstate
Illinois looked an awful lot like their father, William A. Ginglen, a
former marine, once president of the local junior chamber of commerce,
a member of both the Moose and Elks lodges, even an auxiliary town
police officer.

In case there was any lingering hope of doubt,
the gun perched on the bank counter in one picture was a nickel-plated
.45, a cherished gift one of the brothers, Garrett Ginglen, had
presented to his dad a few years back; another image revealed the
waiting getaway car: the Ginglen family’s black Mercury Cougar.

So,
the three brothers walked out of the fire station, feeling as though
"the whole world was spinning," and did the only thing they felt they
could. They turned in their own father, who will be sentenced on
Thursday to what is nearly certain to amount to a life sentence in
prison for the 64-year-old.

     For me, this immediately raises the WWCD question (What Would Confucius Do?).  And, I think, after looking at the totality of the situation, Confucius would agree that the sons did the right thing. 

    OK, let’s get right to the key passage from the Analects which would suggest that Confucius would disagree with the sons’ actions:

   Speaking to Confucius, the Duke of She said: "In my village there was a man called BodyUpright.  When his father stole a sheep, he testified against him."
   "In my village," said Confucius, "to be upright was something else altogether.  Fathers harbored sons, and sons harbored fathers – and between them, they were upright." (13.18)

   So, sons should cover for their fathers.  Much can be, and has been, made of this passage to show that a Confucian legal system is inherently flawed, relying on particular relationships and not equal treatment under law.  And there may be some truth in that.  But Confucius was not a moral absolutist.  He is constantly refining and shaping his ethical judgments depending upon particular circumstance.  This is best seen in the Analects in the manner in which he revises the particulars of certain rituals (9.3) to best suit the immediate context.  It can also be seen in his praise for Kuan Chuang, who did not defend his brother’s honor because the outcome of his brother’s death was a larger political good (14.16, 14.17). 

    Of course, it could be said that in the matter of filial piety, the rules are much stricter.  But even here, as in Menicius’s story of Shun – who had to disobey his father in order to serve the larger filial duty to the family as a whole and the lineage – we can see that judgments must vary depending upon circumstance.

   So, in the case of the Ginglen brothers, a Confucian-inspired assessment would, first, look at the totality of the circumstances.  And they are fairly ugly:

Also found in the house were the elder Mr. Ginglen’s lengthy,
meticulously kept writings. Sheriff Massey described the works, typed
into a computer, as a diary of Mr. Ginglen’s day-by-day descent into
adultery with a girlfriend who lived in Champaign, into drug use and
drug parties, into gruesome financial strain and, ultimately, into bank
robbery.

Turns out the bank hold-up was not a one-time failing, analogous to stealing a sheep, but one of seven armed robberies and a deeper moral collapse.  Moreover, Mr. Ginglen had raised his sons to respect proper behavior and to do the right thing:

His moral compass was uncomplicated, his sons said: "What’s right’s
right and what’s wrong’s wrong." He told them once that if they ever
messed up, they had better hope the law got there before he did. "I
wanted to be just like him," Garrett Ginglen said.

    He had not only violated various social codes, but he had also gone back on the moral teachings he had given to his own sons.  That might well be the clincher for a Confucian judgment in this case.  He had not only dishonored the family in society, but he had fundamentally failed in his duty as a father to his sons.  Under such circumstances, it would be Confuciusly (adverb?) correct to turn your father in.