Investigating Legal Consciousness through the Technical Work of Elite Lawyers: A Case Study on Tax Avoidance

Since the 1990s, legal consciousness has been amply used by sociolegal scholars to better understand the everyday lives of ordinary people, with a strong focus on vulnerable or impoverished people. This article argues that legal consciousness, with some methodological adjustments, could lend itself to the study of the rich and powerful by investigating both the technical work of their lawyers and how that work shapes our broader legal culture. To illustrate this point, this article takes tax avoidance as a case study. Drawing on materials revealed by a recent tax scandal, it suggests that current difficulty in tackling the problem of tax avoidance rests on uneven access to the cultural repertoires related to legal technique and legal innovation, which fosters the tax‐avoidance narrative's ambiguity.     

Mass murders in Germany – classification of surviving offenders based on the examination of court files

Personality, psychopathology, and motives of 44 surviving offenders committing mass murder in Germany over 25 years (1984–2009) were analyzed using court files and psychiatric expertises. Initially, 123 mass murders in Germany were detected in the time period 1980–2010 (inclusive deceased offenders). Using a data entry form based on ViCLAS (Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System), we categorized the 44 surviving mass murderers into three prototypes using the ‘TwoStep Cluster’-method (separation of the offenders in different groups depending on their similarity of specific items): 1. Narcissistic or aggressive men suffering from addiction or affective disorder, committing mass murder out of rage/hate when being intoxicated by alcohol, 2. Psychotic offenders with schizophrenia and comorbid substance abuse. 3. Aggressive, narcissistic or anxious adolescents, half of them suffering from affective disorder or ADHD, committing mass murder out of rage/hate. Not included are such events where the offenders died and therefore no court files or psychiatric expertises were available. Classification and subtyping of the offenders’ personalities and psychopathological conditions might help to improve the chances for an early detection of persons at risk.     

Guiding Principles for Family Justice Programs

The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and Relate, UK, co‐convened a 24‐hour consultation at St George's House, Windsor, UK, on modern family justice issues across Europe. This article identifies a preliminary set of guiding principles for family justice programs developed by consultation participants.     

Comparison of Rehydration Techniques for Fingerprinting the Deceased after Mummification

Postmortem decay causes fingertip decomposition, desiccation, shriveling, and rigidity, reducing the possibility of obtaining sufficiently clear fingerprints for identification. In this study, five rehydration solutions (ammonium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, potassium hydroxide, urea, and warm water) followed by three fingerprint recording methods (photograph, inking roll, and dusting tape) were investigated to process mummified fingertips from an unidentified cadaver. The results show that sodium carbonate treatment is the most effective for minutiae restoration, followed by ammonium hydroxide treatment. This study also demonstrates that even those fingertips that previously failed in urea solution, 1% potassium hydroxide solution, and warm water treatment could be further improved with sodium carbonate solution to obtain qualified minutiae for fingerprint matching. The optimal procedure is rehydrating the desiccated fingertips with sodium carbonate solution for 24 h followed by dusting the finger and transferring the print to adhesive tape.     

Analyzing and Interpreting Lime Burials from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): A Case Study from La Carcavilla Cemetery

Over 500 victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) were buried in the cemetery of La Carcavilla (Palencia, Spain). White material, observed in several burials, was analyzed with Raman spectroscopy and powder XRD, and confirmed to be lime. Archaeological findings at La Carcavilla's cemetery show that the application of lime was used in an organized way, mostly associated with coffinless interments of victims of Francoist repression. In burials with a lime cast, observations made it possible to draw conclusions regarding the presence of soft tissue at the moment of deposition, the sequence of events, and the presence of clothing and other evidence. This study illustrates the importance of analyzing a burial within the depositional environment and taphonomic context.     

An Aquatic Decomposition Scoring Method to Potentially Predict the Postmortem Submersion Interval of Bodies Recovered from the North Sea

This study aimed to develop an aquatic decomposition scoring (ADS) method and investigated the predictive value of this method in estimating the postmortem submersion interval (PMSI) of bodies recovered from the North Sea. This method, consisting of an ADS item list and a pictorial reference atlas, showed a high interobserver agreement (Krippendorff's alpha ≥ 0.93) and hence proved to be valid. This scoring method was applied to data, collected from closed cases—cases in which the postmortal submersion interval (PMSI) was known—concerning bodies recovered from the North Sea from 1990 to 2013. Thirty‐eight cases met the inclusion criteria and were scored by quantifying the observed total aquatic decomposition score (TADS). Statistical analysis demonstrated that TADS accurately predicts the PMSI (p < 0.001), confirming that the decomposition process in the North Sea is strongly correlated to time.     

Prepartum Psychosis and Neonaticide: Rare Case Study and Forensic‐Psychiatric Synthesis of Literature

Peripartum psychosis is a rare but serious psychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of a mood episode with psychotic features. Although controversy surrounds the nosological status of peripartum mental disorders, these conditions continue to be of exceptional interest to the medical and forensic mental health communities. The aim of this study was to report a rare case of prepartum psychosis which escalated to the endpoint of neonaticide and summarize literature on peripartum mental disorders and infanticide. A 30‐year‐old mother murdered her newborn with the spike of her serum delivery system and planned to commit suicide while in hospital after hallucinating due to an acute puerperal psychotic disorder with a prepartum onset and postpartum deterioration. Her disorder was not managed until neonaticide. Throughout this paper, the significance of a multidisciplinary approach for the optimal management of these incidents is highlighted and diagnostic as well as therapeutic issues are addressed.