A brain penetration after Taser injury: Controversies regarding Taser gun safety

We report the case of a 27 year old man who was injured by a Taser gun device which penetrated the frontal part of the skull and damaged the underlying frontal lobe. Cerebral penetration was revealed by a brain CT scan. A neurosurgical procedure was required to remove the dart from the skull and brain and the evolution was successful allowing discharge of the patient one week later. There were no additional lesions, particularly electrifying lesion, as only one probe had penetrated the skull. We also observed the length of a Taser dart is sufficient to allow brain penetration. Fortunately, no infection or neurological complication occurred following brain injury. This case study underlines the potential risk induced by the use of Taser stun gun. Although generally regarded as a safe alternative, serious injuries have however been reported and questions regarding the safety of the device still remains unresolved.     

Severe necrosis of oesophageal and gastric mucosa in fatal methanol poisoning

Methanol is a potent neurotoxic substance that causes severe metabolic acidosis and serious neurological disorders. Most of the cases are accidental exposures to drinking beverages contaminated with methanol. There are few articles reporting pure methanol intoxication; however, it is well known that small quantities of pure methanol causes blindness and death, the minimum lethal dose being 50-100 ml.A case report is presented of a 67-year-old woman, who committed suicide by ingestion of 500 ml of absolute methanol. Despite symptomatic and supportive intensive care, the woman died 23 h after hospital admission due to metabolic acidosis and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. A complete medico-legal autopsy was performed. Grossly, there was complete detachment of the oesophagus mucosa and brownish discolouration of the gastric mucosa. Histological findings showed diffuse haemorrhagic necrosis of the stomach mucosa and intense acute inflammatory infiltration of the lamina propria. To our knowledge, this is the first autopsy report of such severe digestive injuries. A discussion and review of the recent literature on the subject are given.     

Law’s Cultural Project and the Claim to Universality or the Equivocalities of a Familiar Debate

Do our present circumstances allow us to defend a specific connection (that specific connection) between ?legal rules?, ?moral claims? and ?democratic principles? which we may say is granted by an unproblematic presupposition of universality or by an ?acultural? experience of modernity? In order to discuss this question, this paper invokes the challenge-visée of a plausible reinvention of Law??s autonomous project (a reinvention which may be capable of critically re-thinking and re-experiencing Law??s constitutive cultural-civilizational originarium in a ?limit-situation? such as our own). The discussion is developed by recognising that the claim to universality is not only incompatible with a substantive conception of juridicalness as validity but also sustained with difficulty by a procedural representation of discourse and rationality (a representation which, against its own conclusion-claims, could also be said to be culturally and civilizationally bounded). Not forgetting some specific features of contemporary juridical pluralism??namely that which emerges from the counterpoint between semiotic groups or interpretative communities (and their differently assumed claims of intersemioticity concerning the signifier law)??this train of reflection diagnoses briefly a sequence of complementary main difficulties (as ?obstacles? to recognising Law??s demand as an unmistakable cultural project), namely those arising from the formalistic normativistic inheritance (confounding legal autonomy with isolationism), from the challenges and seductions of practical holism (justifying a continuum in which Law??s project loses its sense and autonomy), and also from the familiar debate between exclusive and inclusive versions of positivism and non-positivism (a debate which establishes-consecrates an equivocal counterpoint between Law and Morality).     

Quantification of the subpubic angle in South Africans

Due to the high crime rate in South Africa, forensic anthropologists are increasingly approached to aid in the identification of skeletonized remains, with sex and population affinity assignment being some of the most critical tasks they face. For over a century, the pelvis has been known to be one of the most sexually dimorphic bones of the human body and the subpubic angle is one of the most accurate, albeit scarcely quantified, features thereof. Hence, the aim of this study was to quantify the size of the subpubic angle and compare it between male and female South Africans of African (black) and European (white) descent. One hundred and forty five (145) pelves were selected, consisting of 68 white (43 male and 25 female) and 77 black South Africans (44 male and 33 female), from the Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons housed at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Each of the pelves were articulated and placed into a custom built stand for photographing. Measures of the subpubic angle from these digital images were subjected to numerous statistical analyses. Results indicated that significant differences exist between the sexes, as well as between the two population groups. For black individuals it was found that males generally possessed a subpubic angle of 74.9° or less, with larger values being indicative of the female sex. For white individuals, subpubic angles of 81.4° and less indicated males whilst larger values indicated females, with an average accuracy of 86% for both population groups. These results illustrate the advantages of using the subpubic angle to assist in the estimation of sex and population affinity and also reinforce the need for population specific parameters to be applied.     

Are there population differences in minutiae frequencies? A comparative study of two Argentinian population samples and one Spanish sample

In recent years, both scientific and judicial sources have highlighted the need for more knowledge about minutiae variability, in order to improve their statistical application to fingerprint identification. In line with this trend toward improving our knowledge of this subject, the aim of the present study was to calculate the frequency with which 20 types of minutiae appeared in 2780 fingerprint impressions obtained from 278 individuals from two Argentinian population samples (100 individuals from Ramal and 178 from Puna-Quebrada). The different types of minutiae were located, identified, and quantified visually in two areas on the fingerprint, the inside and outside of a circle, the radius of which cut fifteen ridges perpendicularly, starting from the center cut of the axes defining the sectors. The non-equiprobability found in both population samples for the different minutiae types studied demonstrated that the evidential weight provided by these characteristics is not the same when applied in identification processes, whether used quantitatively (numerical standard) or qualitatively (holistic method). The results obtained for both populations were compared statistically with those published previously for a Spanish population sample, which had been collected using the same methodology. This comparison has enabled us to demonstrate, for the first time, the existence of significant differences between populations in minutiae frequencies, independently from the main pattern type.     

Disobedience and Criticism. The Ethos of Ombudsman's Institution and the "East-European Revolution of Human Rights"

The commissioners of human rights in the Parliament aim at ensuring the protection and formation as well as the development of the culture of human rights with their activities in Hungary and all over the world. What else could be done by the citizens practising their disobedience during the non-violent revolutions in 1989 after Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the American Henry David Thoreau? At a first glance, it perhaps seems to be strange to put the following question: what is the connecting link between the role of political law of a public state and the citizens breaking the rules in order to protect the constitutional rights? What will be the result of this comparison? I think, the result is that we can recognize the role of both functions more thoroughly in operating the constitutional state suitably in order to protect the culture of constitutional rights (reactive role) and to develop them (proactive role).