Homicide by starvation.

Homicide by starvation is a very rare occurrence, especially when the victim is ambulant. This paper presents a case where the death of the individual went undiscovered for more than 3 weeks. A successful conviction for murder ensued. The paper also discusses social and pathological problems associated with this crime.     

Persons found 'not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder': a comparison of British Columbia, Canada and Hunan, China

Current research literature contains very few international, cross-cultural comparison studies of persons adjudicated 'Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder' (NCRMD). This study explores and compares the demographic differences between persons found NCRMD in British Columbia, Canada and Hunan, China. Eight variables such as sex, age, education level, marital status, conviction history, psychiatric history, and index offence are compared between the Canadian and Chinese cohorts. The Canadian and Chinese cohorts were similar in sex and psychiatric history. The divorce rate, educational level, and conviction histories were significantly higher, and the age was significantly older in the Canadian cohort. The Chinese cohort had higher levels of murder and attempted murder index offences. Differences between the two cohorts can be explained in terms of legislative and cultural differences.     

The impact of abuse allegations in perceiving parricide in the courtroom

One hundred and seventy five undergraduates (105 females) read a fictional criminal trial summary of a parricide case in which the juvenile defendant alleged sexual abuse or physical abuse or did not allege abuse. An allegation of either type of abuse led to a greater likelihood of a manslaughter conviction than a murder conviction and greater pro-child ratings (e.g., sympathy toward the defendant) compared to no abuse allegations. Specific evaluations of the defendant mediated the verdict results. In addition, there was no support for the claim that perceptions are more heinous for sexual abuse than physical abuse allegations and only limited support that perceptions for this type of case result in women being more pro-child defendant than men. The discussion focuses on how abuse allegations impact jurors' decision-making processes in parricide cases.     

Alterations in human bones and teeth as a result of restricted sun exposure and contact with corrosive agents

Skeletal remains were discovered in an unused cistern near the Omaha, Nebraska airport and were positively identified through comparison of antemortem and postmortem dental radiographs. Although nearly nine years had elapsed between death and discovery, the bones and teeth revealed evidence of the application of a corrosive substance at or about the time of death, as well as an unusual restricted response to sun exposure, that contributed to the prosecution and murder conviction of a member of Hell's Angels in the Omaha area.     

An Empirical Study of Rape in the Context of Multiple Murder

In recent years, multiple homicide offending has received increased research attention from criminologists; however, there is mixed evidence about the role of rape toward the perpetration of multiple murder. Drawing on criminal career data from a nonprobability sample of 618 confined male homicide offenders selected from eight U.S. states, the current study examines the role of rape as a predictor of multiple homicide offending. Bivariate analyses indicated a significant association between rape and murder charges. Multivariate path regression models indicated that rape had a significant and robust association with multiple murder. This relationship withstood the confounding effects of kidnapping, prior prison confinement, and prior murder, rape, and kidnapping. These results provide evidence that rape potentially serves as a gateway to multiple murder for some serious offenders. Suggestions for future research are proffered.     

What’s wrong with murder?

In a rational system defences should interlock with the elements of the offence to ensure that conviction labels are differentiated according to the defendant’s degree of wrongdoing and culpability. The overall grading structure of criminal homicide, as represented in contemporary doctrine, goes some way to reflect this ethic. But the substance lacks precision and, in some key details, moral coherence. The recent Law Commission Consultation Paper, in a pragmatic and sensible attempt to rid the law and procedure of murder of the malign influence of the mandatory sentence, has unnecessarily compromised such structural coherence as it currently enjoys and which could properly form a satisfactory basis for reform already precise and morally coherent. This is evident both in relation to the abandonment of the attack based template for the fault element in murder, and also in the unwillingness to view the partial defences as affecting the wrong in homicide as opposed to the grade.     

On the Power of Confession Evidence: An Experimental Test of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis

In Arizona v. Fulminante (1991), a U.S. Supreme Court majority stated that confessions are similar to, not fundamentally different from, other types of evidence. To evaluate this claim, three mock juror studies compared the impact of confessions to other common forms of evidence. In Experiment 1, participants read summaries of four criminal trials (murder, rape, assault, theft), each of which contained a confession, an eyewitness identification, character testimony, or none of the above. Significantly, the confessions produced the highest conviction rates. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants read a murder or assault trial containing all three types of evidence and made a series of midtrial judgments. Results indicated that the confession was seen as the most incriminating, followed by the eyewitness and character testimony. Although the comparisons we made are limited in certain respects, our findings suggest that confessions are uniquely potent.     

An integrated technique for the analysis of skin bite marks

The high number of murder, rape, and child abuse cases in South Africa has led to increased numbers of bite mark cases being heard in high courts. Objective analysis to match perpetrators to bite marks at crime scenes must be able to withstand vigorous cross-examination to be of value in conviction of perpetrators. An analysis technique is described in four stages, namely determination of the mark to be a human bite mark, pattern association analysis, metric analysis and comparison with the population data, and illustrated by a real case study. New and accepted techniques are combined to determine the likelihood ratio of guilt expressed as one of a range of conclusions described in the paper. Each stage of the analysis adds to the confirmation (or rejection) of concordance between the dental features present on the victim and the dentition of the suspect. The results illustrate identification to a high degree of certainty.     

Identification of serial homicide victims in the "Green River Murder" investigation

The Green River Murder Investigation in King County, Washington, is currently the longest and most active serial murder investigation in U.S. history. To date, little information has been reported on methods used in identification of serial murder victims. In this paper, various methods used in victim identification are reviewed and difficulties encountered during the course of the investigation are described. The experience of the authors is presented in order to acquaint other agencies with problems of victim identification associated with these serial murder victims and to provide key methods that may be useful in other such investigations.     

Contractualism and the Death Penalty

It is a truism that there are erroneous convictions in criminal trials. Recent legal findings show that 3.3% to 5% of all convictions in capital rape-murder cases in the U.S. in the 1980s were erroneous convictions. Given this fact, what normative conclusions can be drawn? First, the article argues that a moderately revised version of Scanlon’s contractualism offers an attractive moral vision that is different from utilitarianism or other consequentialist theories, or from purely deontological theories. It then brings this version of Scanlonian contractualism to bear on the question of whether the death penalty, life imprisonment, long sentences, or shorter sentences can be justified, given that there is a non-negligible rate of erroneous conviction. Contractualism holds that a permissible act must be justifiable to everyone affected by it. Yet, given the non-negligible rate of erroneous conviction, it is unjustifiable to mete out the death penalty, because such a punishment is not justifiable to innocent murder convicts. It is further argued that life imprisonment will probably not be justified (unless lowering the sentence to a long sentence will drastically increase the murder rate). However, whether this line of argument could be further extended would depend on the impact of lowering sentences on communal security.     

Harmless error analysis: How do judges respond to confession errors?

In Arizona v. Fulminante (1991), the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for appellate judges to conduct a harmless error analysis of erroneously admitted, coerced confessions. In this study, 132 judges from three states read a murder case summary, evaluated the defendant's guilt, assessed the voluntariness of his confession, and responded to implicit and explicit measures of harmless error. Results indicated that judges found a high-pressure confession to be coerced and hence improperly admitted into evidence. As in studies with mock jurors, however, the improper confession significantly increased their conviction rate in the absence of other evidence. On the harmless error measures, judges successfully overruled the confession when required to do so, indicating that they are capable of this analysis.     

On the power of secondary confession evidence

Research on primary confessions has demonstrated that it is a powerful form of evidence. The goal of the current research was to investigate whether secondary confessions – the suspect confesses to another individual who in turn then reports the confession to the police – could be as persuasive. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read a murder trial containing an eyewitness identification, a secondary confession, and character testimony, and made midtrial assessments of the evidence. Results indicated that the secondary confession was evaluated as the most incriminating. In Experiment 3, participants read summaries of four criminal trials, each of which contained a primary confession, a secondary confession, eyewitness identification, or none of the above. The two confession conditions produced significantly higher conviction rates. Our findings suggest that secondary confessions are another powerful and potentially dangerous form of evidence.     

Operationalizing risk: The influence of measurement choice on the prevalence and correlates of prison violence among incarcerated murderers

A retrospective review was performed on the disciplinary records of 1,659 convicted murderers who had been admitted to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice between February 2001 and November 2003. Institutional violence was disaggregated by type of infraction, inmate or staff victim, extent of injury, and weapon usage to determine baseline prevalence and rates. Characteristics of the perpetrators, including younger age, more serious murder conviction, and longer sentence were associated with a higher incidence of prison assaults. Logistic regression analysis of a restricted sample of 1,440 male, non-death row inmates resulted in modestly predictive models for potentially violent acts (AUC = .668), assaults (AUC = .700), and assaults resulting in serious injury (AUC = .750). The findings suggest that the choice of measure used when operationalizating prison violence is crucial in determining baselines, but may have a more limited effect on identifying correlates and predicting outcomes.     

An overlooked vulnerability in a defendant: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a miscarriage of justice

Aim . To describe the implications of a Court of Appeal murder case involving a 15‐year‐old youth. His attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was not identified at trial, but 8 years later it was and his conviction was quashed. Method . An analysis of the judgments by the Court of Appeal at an earlier hearing (1997) and in 2004, together with a review of how the relatively new diagnostic concept of ADHD, can be employed to aid assessment of important vulnerable qualities. Results . One of the primary effects of ADHD in the case was to ‘affect’ the IQ scores, making it look as if the defendant was suffering from mental retardation and so masking his other more relevant vulnerabilities. Conclusions . ADHD symptoms are relevant to contended issues around adverse inferences and fitness to plead and stand trial. A comprehensive ADHD assessment, including neuropsychological testing, is necessary where there are indications of a history of childhood ADHD.     

Jurors’ reactions to recanted confessions: Do the defendant's personal and dispositional characteristics play a role?

Abstract

Confession evidence presented at trial is extremely damaging to the defense. This study examines the impact of a recanted confession on jurors’ perceptions of a murder case in which the defendant claimed to have falsely confessed due either to an underlying medical condition, a psychological disorder, or the general stress of the interrogation. Also included were an inadmissible confession condition and a no-confession control condition. Results showed that the impact of the confession was mediated in part by the circumstances surrounding it. Although probability-of-commission estimates were as high in all of the conditions involving a confession, conviction rates were marginally higher when the disputed confession involved mental illness or interrogation-induced stress than when there was no confession, yet did not differ when the disputed confession involved a medical disorder or there was no confession. These findings show that not all recanted confessions are treated equally and that people selectively discount confessions depending on biases and beliefs they hold.     

Rapid and sensitive typing of forensic stains by PCR amplification of polymorphic simple repeat sequences in case work.

After failure of conventional typing and multilocus DNA fingerprinting methods to compare a minute vaginal swab stain with blood from a murder victim and a suspect, we used enzymatic DNA amplification (polymerase chain reaction, PCR) to discriminate the DNAs by typing of simple sequence lengths polymorphisms. A mixed dinucleotide locus in the HLA-DRB gene region and three novel tetranucleotide polymorphisms located autosomally as well as on the human Y chromosome were used to exclude a jailed subject from a case of murder.     

PROBABILISTIC MODELS OF YOUTHFUL CRIMINAL CAREERS

This paper focuses on the characterization of the criminal careers of youthful offenders. It was found that these criminal careers could be modeled with parameters rejecting constant individual rates of offending and constant probability of career termination; population heterogeneity could be adequately represented by two distinct groups—designated here as "frequents" and occasionals." These parameters were estimated for the multiple offenders in a London cohort studied from their first convictions until age 25. In that cohort, the frequents were estimated to have an annual conviction rate of 1.14 convictions per year (constant with age) and a probability of career termination of .10 following each conviction; the occasionals had an annual conviction rate of .41 and termination probability of .33 following each conviction; the frequents were estimated to comprise 43% of the population, and the occasionals the others 57%. While this parsimonious model structure was adequate for the London cohort, it must still be tested with other offender populations.     

Rethinking Community Organization and Robbery: Considering Illicit Market Dynamics

In this investigation we examine the relationship between the certainty of execution and murder in the District of Columbia, 1890–1970. By examining a small political/geographic unit like the District, we avoid the aggregation problems of previous time-series analyses at the national level, and time-series and cross-sectional investigations of states as the unit of analysis. At odds with the deterrence argument, we find no evidence of a substantial and/or statistically significant inverse relationship between the certainty of execution and murder rates when multiple execution and murder rate variables are considered, when various time lags are examined, and when five time periods are examined between 1890 and 1970. In contrast, there is some suggestion that the immediate effect of executions may be to increase, not decrease, murders. This possible effect is extremely slight and short-term, however, with murder and executions being largely independent factors in the District.