Sudden Death Due To Acute Cocaine Toxicity—Excited Delirium in a Body Packer

Excited delirium denotes a life-threatening medical condition characterized by the acute onset of agitated and violent behavior that often results in a sudden and unexplained death. Cocaine-induced excited delirium refers to fatal cocaine intoxication with the following symptoms occurring sequentially: hyperthermia, delirium with agitation, respiratory arrest, and death. We present a case of cocaine-induced excited delirium in a cocaine “body packer” or a “mule”, specifically an individual who attempts to smuggle cocaine within the body. Investigators at the scene initially suspected homicide due to the victim's sharp and blunt force injuries. Three rubber packets containing cocaine were removed from the victim's rectum. Blood toxicological analysis revealed an alcohol concentration of 0.016 g/100 and cocaine >1 mg/L. The forensic pathologist should consider cocaine-induced excited delirium when an individual exhibits aggressive behavior, unexpected strength, and resistance to pain who dies suddenly. Further analysis should be performed during the scene investigation and autopsy for evidence of body packing.     

Urbanisation,nativism, and the rule of law in South Africa's ‘forbidden’ cities

South Africa's political liberalisation and strengthening regional ties have engendered new patterns of immigration and urbanisation, resulting in South African migrants and non-nationals converging on the streets of previously ‘forbidden’ cities. Conflicts over space, services and livelihoods are emerging as these groups meet and compete. To settle these disputes, South African citizens and politicians regularly rely on nativist discourses that make one's rights to the city contingent on one's national origins. Efforts to exclude foreigners are in turn encouraging and legitimising new forms of bias, administrative discrimination and anti-foreigner policing. Bolstered by official sanction, these are creating urban ‘zones of exception’, areas in which the state authorises its agents to work outside the law. Although popular among South Africans, the extra-legal harassment, detention and deportation of non-nationals has helped entrench new economies of corruption and violence that jeopardise the rights and welfare of all urban residents. While rooted in the dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa, these findings resonate with global trends in which quests to assert sovereignty through immigration controls are resulting in actions that undermine the legitimacy and founding principles of the liberal states that undertake them.     

The Trouble in Mali—corruption,collusion, resistance

The combined force of the 2012 coup in Bamako and the rebellion in the north entailed an unmasking of Mali. What had been presented as a showcase of democracy, good governance, and peace and reconciliation proved to be a facade for institutional weakness and mismanagement. The collusion between regional and national ‘big man’ interests that the crisis revealed showed little if any respect for human security and development. This article will analyse the causes of the crisis and the strategies of key actors, including the Islamist rebels. The consequences of and responses to the conflict will also be addressed before the article ends with some tentative conclusions concerning the future stability of Mali and the Sahel region. The article is based on the authors’ long engagement with Mali, spanning more than a decade, but the most recent material presented is based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted there in February and March 2013.