Forensic Application of Analytical Mechanics in Fatal Fall From a Height

Fatal fall from a height initiated with a swinging motion on the sagittal plane of the victim's body is examined. Method of analytical mechanics is adopted to establish the functional relations between the swinging angle of the body and the force needed to sustain the body until release, and the amount of the horizontal displacement that would occur after release. The analysis is applied to support an expert opinion presented in a criminal court in which two accused were convicted of murder for dropping a female victim from a bridge. The results indicate that it is unlikely for the body to locate as recorded by the police investigation report in the case. This study demonstrates that a straightforward mechanical analysis can be utilized to examine uncommon falling scenarios.     

Representational Altruism: The Wary Cooperator as Authoritative Decision Maker

What drives policymakers to put the interests of others above their own? If human nature is inherently selfish, it makes sense to institutionalize incentives that counter decision makers' temptations to use their positions to benefit themselves over others. A growing literature rooted in evolutionary theories of human behavior, however, suggests that humans, under certain circumstances, have inherent predispositions towards “representational altruism,” i.e., to make an authoritative decision to benefit another at one's own expense. Drawing on Hibbing and Alford's conception of the wary cooperator, a theoretical case is made for such behavioral expectations, which are confirmed in a series of original laboratory experiments.     

Crime and justice in the context of resource scarcity

This concept paper presents a theory of environmental scarcity developed byHomer-Dixon. Homer-Dixon developed a model to describe the consequences of scarcity for sub-national violence in third world countries. This paper hasfour interrelated purposes. First, it presents the model of scarcity developedby Thomas Homer-Dixon in 1999. Second, it assesses the way in which the scarcity model contextualizes criminal justice and criminology research, andby extension, how research in crime and justice processes can broaden the scarcity model. Third, it applies elements of the model to the United States,a goal that represents a generalization of the model from third-world to first-world settings. Fourth, it presents a particular case, the migrationof African-Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the 1950s and1960s and consequent inner-city violence in the 1960s, that displays manyelements of the environmental scarcity model.     

Acute myoglobinuria as a fatal complication of heroin addiction

A fatal case of myoglobinuria complicating heroin addiction is described. Clinically the patient had no overt symptoms of rhabdomyolysis. Pathologists should be alerted to this rare complication in heroin addicts who die of no apparent cause. The antimyoglobin immunoperoxidase technique is useful in confirming the diagnosis.     

Histologic findings in the lung in sudden infant death

The lungs of 79 children who had died between the ages of 1 week and 2 years old were histologically examined. 59 of these children could be categorized as cases of Sudden Infant Death because of the history and postmortem findings. In the remaining 20 cases a definite cause of death could be established. This is the same collective on which the histological investigations of the lymphatic tissue has been carried out. Morphological changes which are typical for a virus pneumonia were found in a substantially higher frequency in the cases of Sudden Infant Death than in the control cases. The validity of these findings and their possible significance for the cause of death are discussed.     

The onset of adult offending: A neglected dimension of the criminal career

The conventional wisdom in criminology is that adult onset of offending is a rare event. Closer examination of the extant literature that use official records, however, reveals that an average of 50 percent of adult offenders initiate offending at age eighteen or older. Although criminological research has investigated late onset offending in adolescence, there is little research on adult onset offending and the correlates of adult offending. Using police contact and interview data from the 1942 and 1949 birth cohort data from Racine, WI, this study investigated the correlates of crime for adult onset and persistent offenders. The results show that employment is the only correlate to affect the probability of adult offending differently for previously delinquent and nondelinquent offenders. This article concludes by highlighting the neglect of research on adult offenders, specifically the large percentage of adult onset offenders, and calling for more research on this topic.