Pregnancy-related maternal deaths

Pregnancy is a normal biologic process, but because of a variety of physiologic factors, it increases a woman's risk for death. Maternal deaths in pregnancy may be due to conditions unique to pregnancy, conditions associated with pregnancy, or conditions unrelated to but exacerbated by pregnancy. Death may occur during any trimester, during labor/birth, or postpartum. In this report, we present 45 cases of pregnancy-related maternal deaths that were investigated and autopsied at the Dallas County Medical Examiners office between 1977 and 1999, and we review the topic of pregnancy-related maternal death.     

“Intuitive” Lie Detection of Children’s Deception by Law Enforcement Officials and University Students

Adults ability to detect childrens deception was examined. Police officers, customs officers, and university students attempted to differentiate between children who lied or told the truth about a transgression. When children were simply questioned about the event (Experiment 1), the adult groups could not distinguish between lie-tellers and truth-tellers. However, participants were more accurate when the children had participated in moral reasoning tasks (Experiment 2) or promised to tell the truth (Experiment 3) before being interviewed. Additional exposure to the children did not affect accuracy (Experiment 4). Customs officers were more certain about their judgments than other groups, but no more accurate. Overall, adults have a limited ability to identify childrens deception, regardless of their experience with lie detection.     

When Does Quality Count?: Perceptions of Hearsay Testimony About Child Sexual Abuse Interviews

This study assessed how the quality of a sexual abuse investigative interview with a child and the age of the child influence jurors reactions to either the original interview with the child or to testimony by an adult hearsay witness (the interviewer). Participants (N = 360) were randomly assigned to 1 of 12 conditions in a 2 (type of testimony:hearsay testimony vs. child interview) × (interview quality: poor, typical, or good) × (age of the child: 4 years old vs. 10 years old) factorial design. Participants reached individual verdicts, answered a series of questions, and then deliberated in a group with five other participants. As predicted, jurors in the child interview conditions were more likely to find the defendant guilty if they read the good interview than if they read either the poor or the typical interview, but in the hearsay conditions verdicts did not significantly differ by interview quality. These findings suggest that there is a significant loss of information when the testimony of a hearsay witness is used in place of the actual interview with the child, and call into question the appropriateness of admitting hearsay testimony by interviewers.     

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory

In the past 30 years researchers have examined the impact of heightened stress on the fidelity of eyewitness memory. Meta-analyses were conducted on 27 independent tests of the effects of heightened stress on eyewitness identification of the perpetrator or target person and separately on 36 tests of eyewitness recall of details associated with the crime. There was considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impact both types of eyewitness memory. Meta-analytic Z-scores, whether unweighted or weighted by sample size, ranged from –5.40 to –6.44 (high stress condition–low stress condition). The overall effect sizes were –.31 for both proportion of correct identifications and accuracy of eyewitness recall. Effect sizes were notably larger for target-present than for target-absent lineups, for eyewitness identification studies than for face recognition studies and for eyewitness studies employing a staged crime than for eyewitness studies employing other means to induce stress.     

Venirepersons’s Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense: Developing,Refining, and Validating a Scale

Given the prevalence and predictive strength of negative attitudes toward the insanity defense, we conducted three studies with 426 venirepersons to develop an understanding and a measure of public attitudes toward the insanity defense. In these studies, we developed, iteratively refined, and cross-validated the insanity defense attitude-revised (IDA-R) scale. The results suggest that IDAs are underpinned by ones degree of (a) orientation toward strict liability, and (b) concern about perceived injustice and danger associated with the defense. The IDA-R assesses these two-dimensions with good internal consistency, convergent and divergent validity, and predictive utility. The IDA-Rs predictive utility generalizes across jurisdictions and manipulation of case facts. Theoretical and practical implications for research and for identifying impartial jurors at voir dire are discussed.     

Registrants,Voters, and Turnout Variability Across Neighborhoods

Although political participation has received wide-ranging scholarly attention, little is known for certain about the effects of social and political context on turnout. A scattered set of analyses—well-known by both political scientists and campaign consultants—suggests that ones neighborhood has a relatively minor impact on the decision to vote. These analyses, however, typically rely upon data from a single location. Drawing on official lists of registered voters from sixteen major counties across seven states (including Florida) from the 2000 presidential election, we use geographic/mapping information and hierarchical models to obtain a more accurate picture of how neighborhood characteristics affect participation, especially among partisans. Our research shows that neighborhoods influence voting by interacting with partisan affiliation to dampen turnout among voters we might otherwise expect to participate. Most notably, we find Republican partisans in enemy territory tend to vote less than expected, even after accounting for socioeconomic status. Our findings have implications for campaign strategy, and lead us to suggest that campaign targeting efforts could be improved by an integration of aggregate- and individual-level information about voters.     

Semiotics,Civic Education And The Internet

This essay examines civic education and the representational capacity of the Internet. Of concern is encouraging citizens to think about law and politics as something more than just a zero-sum process and the Internet as a public forum. These observations take a semiotic approach to the representational character of the Internet. I recommend alertness and responsiveness to the complexity of public affairs and skepticism about anything else other than provisional and hypothetical social analysis.     

A New Conceptual Framework for Analysing a Case Study on ICT and the Sanctity of the Home

The case study shows the complex reality with respect to processes of meaning construction. Ruiters framework provides a more sophisticated instrument to analyse these complex processes. Unlike the classic models of legal communication, based upon a linear causality between norm and action, and unlike the dual model of interplay between legal institutions and institutional legal facts developed by MacCormick and Weinbergers Institutional Legal Theory (ILT), the tripartite model of interplay between rule, application, and social practices, stemming from Ruiters analysis of ILT, can contribute to a more refined model of legal communication.     

Why rural crime and justice really matter

While it is true that in general urban crime is roughly three times higher than rural crime, over the last decades rural crime has increased at the same rate as crime in big cities. Whereas violent crime in large cities rose from 1966 through 1991 and then declined, rural rates drifted upward for the entire period. Moreover, some crimes are more prevalent in rural settings than in cities, while some others by definition cannot even be committed in cities at all (“rural-specific offenses”). Meanwhile, researchers have paid little attention to rural crime and justice. This is highly regrettable given that studying rural crime and justice can potentially contribute in very important ways both to criminological theory and to crime policy. This article deals with why it is important for researchers, the justice system, and society in general to pay greater attention to issues of rural crime and rural justice. Among the reasons discussed are statistical arguments defying popular misconceptions, arguments in the field of criminological theory, counterintuitive trends in rural crime, various disadvantages which rural areas suffer compared with urban ones, strategies for dealing with crime which must be adapted to the rural environment, and some others. Finally, both theory and policy implications are discussed, demonstrating that rural crime cannot be understood or controlled in the same ways as urban crime is. Author Note: Dr. Wojciech Cebulak recived his Master's in Law from Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, and his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University. He has taught at Salem State College, Oklahoma State University, Kent State University, and is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Criminal Justice, Minot State University, 500 University Avenue West, Minot, ND 58707. He has also been Project Director of the Research Partner/Crime Analyst Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative for the District of North Dakota.