Experience Versus Expectation: Economic Insecurity,the Great Recession,and Support for the Death Penalty

Scholars have theorized that people who report past economic hardship and those who forecast future economic instability will be more likely to support punitive criminal justice policies than those who do not. Only recently have researchers begun to empirically examine this association, and the findings from this small literature have been highly inconsistent. The current study contributes to this line of inquiry by investigating a uniquely rich set of economic insecurity measures included in a very large national survey (N = 9,060) fielded during a time period of special theoretical salience: the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Specifically, using survey data from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, we explore the effects of experienced and expected personal, vicarious, and societal economic insecurity on support for the death penalty. Contrary to the hypotheses, expectations of future economic insecurity are negatively associated with death penalty support, but this relationship is conditional on respondents’ demographics.     

A War on Cops? The Effects of Ferguson on the Number of U.S. Police Officers Murdered in the Line of Duty

Police agencies in the U.S. are currently facing a major legitimacy crisis resulting from a spate of high-profile use of force incidents, many involving minority citizens. Recent headlines emphasize that there is now a “war on cops” and that police officers are facing increasing levels of hostility and violence fueled by a growing anti-police sentiment. In the aftermath of events in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, some commentators claim that the number of police officers feloniously assaulted and killed in the line of duty has increased sharply. Using time series analysis of data from the Officer Down Memorial Page, we test whether events in Ferguson were associated with an increase in the number of police officers murdered in the line of duty. Our results provide no evidence for a “Ferguson Effect” on the number of U.S. police officers murdered in the line of duty as of March 2016.     

缺氧相关microRNA在窒息死亡原因推断中的意义

在缺氧条件下microRNA(miRNA)能与转录因子等相互作用,调节细胞代谢,血管再生,血细胞生成,细胞增殖、分化及凋亡等生理过程,这些过程可能在窒息导致的死亡中发挥重要作用。本文拟对缺氧条件下miRNA的调节功能及缺氧对miRNA生物合成的影响进行综述,以期为miRNA在法医学窒息死亡原因推断中的研究提供新思路。     

AGE,PERIOD, AND COHORT EFFECTS ON DEATH PENALTY ATTITUDES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1974–2014

In this article, we further the understanding of both changes in public opinion on capital punishment in the United States and changes in the factors associated with public opinion on the death penalty. Support for the death penalty may be motivated by events happening during specific time periods, and it can vary across birth cohorts as a result of cohort‐specific socialization processes, demographic changes, and formative events that are specific to each generation. An explication of the sources of and variation in death penalty attitudes over time would benefit from the accounting for the age of the respondent, the year of the survey response, and the birth cohort of the respondent. We improve on previous research by using multiple approaches including hierarchical age–period–cohort models and data from the General Social Survey (N = 41,474) to examine changes in death penalty attitudes over time and across birth cohorts. The results showed curvilinear age effects, strong period effects, and weak cohort effects on death penalty support. The violent crime rate explained much of the variation in support for the death penalty across periods. The examination of subgroup differences suggests that support for the death penalty is becoming concentrated among Whites, Protestants, and Republicans.     

亲属间死亡赔偿请求权研究——兼论亲属间伤害赔偿

亲属间一方导致另一方伤害或者死亡,受害者本人或者其近亲属的损害赔偿权利与侵权法的价值并不契合,所以对亲属间的死亡赔偿请求权应予以适当限制。赔偿权利人只限于死者一亲等亲属,并且赔偿只限于加害人故意的情形下。直系血亲间一方致另一方死亡,死者近亲属不得提起赔偿请求。在处理此类案件时,还应注意赔偿与相关当事人的权利、责任的冲突问题并予以适当协调。     

人文关怀视野下死刑复核制度之法理思考

死刑复核程序是我国刑事案件中重要的程序,同时死刑的复核权也是这一程序中关键性的话题,正因为死刑复核程序能够有效的防止错杀、保障人权,所以我们必须进一步的完善这一制度。但现实中由于死刑复核权的下放使死刑复核程序名存实亡,同时由于立法上不完善使这一权力和程序在实践中难以实现立法的初衷。所以在“尊重和保障人权”的背景下,我们必须对死刑程序的相关问题进行进一步的完善。     

我国死刑复核程序之改革

死刑复核程序为我国大陆死刑案件裁判生效之必经程序,对于保障死刑适用之审慎性和准确性有着重要意义。但由于死刑核准权之下放、法律规定之死刑复核审理方式不科学等原因,我国大陆死刑复核程序存在程序虚置、复核标准不统一、行政程序色彩浓厚等问题。我国理论界和实务界有废除论和完善论两种观点,而以完善论为主流之观点。完善论提倡以保留我国死刑复核程序为前提重构我国死刑复核程序和法院体制。在此现实背景和理论背景下,最高人民法院扛起改革大旗,收回死刑复核权之同时,改原来死刑案件二审之书面审为开庭审,是为我国大陆死刑复核程序之重大进步。死刑复核程序之改革蕴含着公正与效率的博弈,其改革无非是还原其司法程序性质和本来的价值追求,目前之改革趋势亦朝着此方向发展。     

我国增设死刑特赦程序之构想

死刑赦免制度是我国死刑适用方面的一个制度空白,宪法虽然有关于赦免制度的规定,但并无专门的操作程序。履行国际公约规定的义务、死刑本身的不可回复性以及“死刑犯不引渡”的国际惯例都要求我国尽快增设死刑赦免程序。借鉴中国古代赦免制度以及美国死刑赦免程序的经验,我国宜选择特赦作为死刑赦免方式,以被判刑人申请特赦权为主,同时兼顾检察机关追诉犯罪需要赋予其一定的特赦申请权,构建由全国人大常委会审核批准的死刑特赦程序并完善相关配套措施。     

美国行政赦免制度及其对死刑执行的限制

赦免是各国以外在于司法制度的方法干预司法的一项制度.美国行政赦免制度是美国行政干预司法的制度.美国联邦和部分州保留了死刑,其行政赦免在限制死刑执行中曾经起到了极其重要的作用.虽然自上世纪70年代以来,美国行政赦免在限制死刑执行中的运用已变得较为少见,但其仍是一个有效的限制死刑执行的制度.     

Pyrographies: Photography and the good death

This essay theorizes the ethical potential of photography or what I call “pyrography” by enacting a version of care for death in attending closely to a sort of rehearsal for the deathbed in French photographer and writer Hervé Guibert's photo-novel Suzanne and Louise first published by Gallimard in 1980, the same year as Roland Barthes's famous essay on photography, Camera Lucida. The essay develops the transformative ethical possibilities of and queer political potentialities of pyrography by reading Guibert's project with his two elderly aunts in relation to the work of two of Guibert's intimates: Michel Foucault's “The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will” and Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida and Mourning Diary. In Mourning Diary, Barthes describes the plan for Camera Lucida as an ephemeral monument to his dead mother whose loss he calls, following the last work of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott: “the catastrophe that has already occurred.” Through its own writing with fire of the death we fear that has already occurred and that we cannot access directly, photography may enable the kind of “as if” work or projective imaginative enactment for which Winnicott calls. This essay put this concept of the photographic pyre or pyrographies to work to characterize a kind of photographic act. Pyrography is a facture of and with the flammable, not of and about the past, but for the present and future. It is a practice of making volatile structures for feeling with the taboo scenes of the conjunction of old age, desire, and death that create spaces not just for mourning the losses that have actually happened. Pyrographies shape spaces in which one might begin to imagine and transact with care the losses and the letting go yet to come. Pyrographies, I am suggesting, trade in the illusions of presence. They give us the catastrophe that has already occurred in palpable form, enabling us to negotiate shame and fear but also desire toward the seemingly impossible: the good death.