Dumping of victims in walls

A case is described in which a 58-year-old woman was shot and then dumped in a wall. She was immured under the staircase in the basement of a residential house by the offender, who was acting alone. The body was not found until 8 months later. The victim had been reported missing by members of her family. The cool environment delayed the onset of putrefactive changes so that it was not difficult to conduct forensic pathologic investigations into the bullet wound, with traces of gunpowder residue found on the victim's head. The way in which the offense was committed did not provide any indication of diminished responsibility on the part of the 27-year-old offender, which was reflected in the judicial consequences.     

The relevance of the detection of troponins to the forensic diagnosis of cardiac contusion

The forensic diagnosis of cardiac contusion has hitherto been based mainly on anamnesis, concomitant thoracic injuries and the detection of macroscopic changes to the heart. Parallel histological and serological investigations of the heart-specific troponins have been conducted with varying results. This paper aims to show whether heart-specific troponins are suitable as a means of securing the diagnosis in proven cases of cardiac contusion and of determining which of the three heart-specific troponins cTnT, cTnI and cTnC are most significant in serology and histology for postmortem diagnosis. In the study, 25 cases of known cardiac contusion and 11 controls without vital myocardial trauma taken from autopsy material were prospectively investigated. Investigation of the venous serum revealed significant differences in the concentrations of the case and control groups for troponin T (mean value 5.5056 versus 0.4982; p=0.014), for troponin C (mean value 263.9280 versus 68.5640; p=0.001) and for troponin I (mean value 1404.0560 versus 36.1650; p=0.003). In histology there are also significantly different depletions between the groups investigated (cTnT: p=0.002; cTnC: p=0.003; cTnI: p<0.001) taking into account the autolysis time.     

Expression of adhesion molecules in skin wounds: diagnostic value in legal medicine

The adhesion molecules identified in recent years can help improve the diagnosis of the wound age, especially of injuries with a short survival time. This is also indicative of the vitality of the wounds. The material investigated in the study originated from 465 skin wounds. The samples were taken from human autopsy material, during the surgical treatment of wounds (excision) of patients and from experimental incised wounds of mice. To judge the age of skin wounds the endothelial adhesion molecules were detected in paraffin sections after autoclaving and using the ABC technique. Human skin wounds: strong positive staining was observed of ICAM-1 1.5 h at the earliest and 3.5 days at the latest, for the P-selectin 3 min at the earliest and 7 h at the latest, for the E-selectin 1 h at the earliest and 17 days at the latest and for VCAM-1 3 h at the earliest and 3.5 days at the latest after the time of injury. The L-selectin was expressed constitutively. Mice skin wounds: strong positive immunohistochemical reactions were found as a rule earlier than in human skin wounds. The detection of an increased expression of ICAM-1, VCAM-1 and P- and E-selectins can improve the wound age assessment in injuries with short survival times.     

The Krishna Baradwaj and Eric Wolf Prize 2011–2012

The political geography of environmental governance can overlap and converge with uneven agrarian change in forest frontiers subject to violent enclosures. When the governance of conservation territories converges with and reinforces enclosures, spaces can be controlled with authority and violence that places livelihoods at greater risk in the context of uneven agrarian political economies – the outcomes of which reflect ‘violent enclosures’. This paper examines how indigenous resource users negotiate the discursive and material impact of environmental governance converging with militarized-insurgent spaces as overlapping enclosures in a protected area on Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on local experiences, we examine how the livelihood vulnerability arising in the local political economy is exacerbated by access and use constraints from the overlapping enclosures of environmental and military governance in the buffer zone of Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park. We argue that the seemingly less governable forest frontiers of protected areas are often the poorest, highly politicized and contested spaces of political and ecological refuge. Here, scarce forest resources are managed closely, and recalcitrant groups seek refuge as military powers frame, conflate and manage local behaviour as criminal and dangerous, merging conservation and military interventions as coercive governance. We conclude that only by critically engaging how governance processes and enclosures converge to yield structural and discursive violence – and by making this apparent to policy makers – will indigenous peoples successfully negotiate the double bind of violent enclosures in frontiers.