贩卖毒品案件言词证据问题探讨

毒品的贩卖是毒品从制造到消费过程的主渠道和中心环节,故贩卖毒品罪是毒品犯罪中涉及范围最广的一种犯罪。证据是案件的生命和灵魂,实践中如何针对贩卖毒品案件言词证据的特点,正确充分地收集、审查、判断贩卖毒品案的言词证据,并依据言词证据定案,成为公诉工作中值得探讨的课题。     

International Patent Strategies of Small and Large Firms: An Empirical Study of Nanotechnology

The aim of this article is to investigate to what extent small‐firm foreign patents differ from those of their larger counterparts. The research setting consists of the population of U.S.‐owned small and large businesses with patent applications at the World International Patent Organization during 1996–2006 in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Findings reveal a significant and growing contribution of small firms to the globalization of patents. The analysis also suggests that small‐firm patents tend to be more novel and embedded in domestic innovation networks than large‐firm patents. Policy implications are multiple, including putting international patenting on the policy agenda and helping highly innovative small companies to explore foreign commercial opportunities in new markets of capital and technology.     

Putting a price on drugs: An economic sociological study of price formation in illegal drug markets

Prices in illegal drug markets are difficult to predict. Based on qualitative interviews with 68 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore dealers’ perspectives on fair prices and the processes that influence their pricing decisions. Synthesized through economic sociology, we draw on perspectives from traditions as different as behavioral economics and cultural analysis to demonstrate how participants in illicit drug distribution base their pricing decisions on institutional context, social networks, and drug market cultures. We find that dealers take institutional constraints into consideration and search for niches with high earnings and low risks. The use of transactions embedded in social networks promotes a trusting form of governance, which enables strategic network management and expedient distribution but also uncompetitive pricing. Finally, dealers’ pricing decisions are embedded in three different cultures narratives: business, friendship, and street cultural stories, with widely varying implications for prices. Our findings demonstrate how an economic sociology of illicit drug distribution can extend insights from behavioral economics and cultural studies into a coherent criminology of illegal drug markets.     

Systemic Dissemination of Injected Foreign Material

A 32‐year‐old woman collapsed following an intravenous injection of material that included crushed pharmaceutical tablets. Resuscitation was attempted but was unsuccessful. She had an extensive past medical history of complications resulting from intravenous drug use. Death was due to mixed drug toxicity. The major findings at autopsy included a 10 mm deep skin sinus over the right femoral vein that was used as an injection site. Polarizable foreign material was present at the injection site and also within the lungs with a granulomatous reaction. Of note, a probe‐patent foramen ovale had permitted paradoxical embolization of this material into the systemic circulation with lodgement within the liver, portal lymph nodes, myocardium, spleen, kidneys, and pancreas. This case highlights the importance of checking for any intracardiac shunts, which may be quite small, and systemic dissemination of foreign material to multiple organs in intravenous drug users who present for medicolegal assessment.     

Enantiomeric Identification of Pregabalin by GC‐MS via Methylation and S‐TPC Chiral Derivatization

Pregabalin is a Schedule V controlled substance which is defined as the (S) enantiomer of 3‐(aminomethyl)‐5‐methylhexanoic acid. It is used legitimately to treat neuropathy in patients with diabetes as well as for epilepsy and fibromyalgia. Pregabalin is an amino acid and an amphoteric compound, which makes it difficult to analyze using the conventional GC‐MS instrumentation found in most forensic drug analysis laboratories. Problems associated with the traditional GC‐MS analysis of pregabalin include selective solubility, ring closure to the corresponding lactam in the GC injection port and/or the MS transfer line and difficulty with chiral derivatization due to the presence of a carboxylic acid moiety. Here, we show that these challenges can be overcome by methylating (capping) the carboxylic acid portion of the pregabalin molecule and converting to the corresponding methyl ester. Once the methyl ester is synthesized, chiral derivatization at the amine can be achieved to identify the controlled (S) enantiomer of pregabalin via GC‐MS.     

From fragile to smart consumers: Shifting paradigm for the digital era

The use of digital technologies, functioning thanks to data processing, has been conquering many sectors of the world economy and it is possible that, in the near future, only a few markets will still be excluded from this industrial revolution. Therefore, even if one chose unreasonably to disregard the many innovations that the digital economy has brought about, its development seems quite inexorable, although it is true that this new stage in human progress raises some concerns. In particular, many worry about the millions of passive and powerless digital consumers who, facing a few huge and influential companies without any education or awareness, could succumb and find themselves poorer, victimized, and manipulated. The paper proposes to react to this state of affairs without further fueling the fear of the digital revolution and without the thought that regulation can be used only as a shield to protect fragile digital consumers. Rather, by taking inspiration from some regulatory actions undertaken by the European Union, the paper bears in mind that regulation can be used as a sword in the hands of consumers to finally assign them a lead role in digital markets. New rules to empower consumers and to make them take autonomous and independent decisions as to the management of their personal data as well as to the merits of digital firms can be envisaged. After all, one of the cultural roots of Western societies is that every individual should be enabled to be faber ipsius fortunae.     

Online platforms and pricing: Adapting abuse of dominance assessments to the economic reality of free products

Online platforms, which are at the forefront of today's economy, are subject to intensive competition law enforcement. However, the platform business model presents challenges for the application of competition law. Most notably, they appear to offer consumers a great number of their products for free. The explanation for most of these supposedly free products is offered by two-sided market theory: consumers may not be paying, but the ‘other’ side of the market is. This other side of the market often consists of advertisers, which pay the platform for access to the consumers’ information (to target advertisements) and attention (to show the advertisements). As many of these platforms are now potentially dominant, they come within the scope of competition law's abuse of dominance provision, including the doctrines of predatory and excessive pricing. These price-based theories need to adapt to the often price-less platform business model in order to prevent competition authorities from making both type I and type II enforcement errors. At the same time, competition law enforcement needs to consider—and at times give priority to—other branches of law that address abusive behaviour concerning free products. Through the use of case studies, this article therefore suggests ways in which abuse of dominance assessments can take into account the economic reality of free products.     

Maximizing order or harm? Arrests among a social network of people who inject drugs in a large urban city

Encountering the criminal justice system at the first point of entry---an arrest---is associated with heightened HIV and Hepatitis risk behavior among people who inject drugs (PWIDS). Intervening structurally through the criminal justice system impacts public health; therefore, determining arrest patterns is an important tool for risk reduction. Among a sample of 740 PWIDs, and their social network members recruited from predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore City, a third were recently arrested in the previous six months, and of those, the arrests were disproportionately African-American persons and characterized as nonviolent, i.e., drug possession/attempt to purchase (38%) and loitering (29%). Poisson regression models were built adjusted for age, sex, race, education level, homelessness, and monthly income after exploring bivariable characteristics of arrests using chi-squared tests. Active drug use was associated with a recent arrest (adjusted prevalence ratio: aPR 2.38 95% CI 1.6, 3.6), in addition to participants who recently reported attending a syringe exchange program (aPR 1.45 95% CI 1.1, 2.0). Our findings are suggestive of recent media coverage and burgeoning research revealing the prioritization of policing resources toward both communities of color and neighborhoods of intensified drug trafficking. Further research is warranted to contextualize the operationalization of criminal justice resources and the impact on community health.     

The Prevalence of Paraphernalia Found at the Scene of Drug‐Related Deaths

Many illicit drugs involve the use of paraphernalia, and the presence of paraphernalia found at the scene of death may suggest that the death is drug‐related. Few sources of objective data are available regarding the prevalence of drug paraphernalia found at the scene of drug‐related deaths or the likelihood of a death with drug paraphernalia found at the scene to be drug‐related. This study reviews the deaths which were investigated by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office in an attempt to provide objective data. Over 4000 deaths with scene investigations were reviewed, and the presence of paraphernalia was found to be strongly associated with the death being drug‐related, heroin‐related, or cocaine‐related with the relative risk for each being 5.0, 15.4, and 6.6, respectively. This confirms that the presence of drug paraphernalia at the scene of death strongly suggests the death to be drug‐related and in particular heroin‐related.     

THE FUNNY SIDE OF DRUG DEALING: RISK,HUMOR, AND NARRATIVE IDENTITY

In this study, we explore the role humor plays in the narrated identities of drug dealers, in their negotiation of the threat of formal punishment, and in their cultural membership and authority. By drawing from interview and observation data gathered from 33 active drug dealers residing in St. Louis, Missouri, we find that humor facilitates identity work among illicit drug dealers in several ways. Humor is an important symbolic boundary marker distinguishing dealers from others they consider “stupid” or less circumspect. It also indicates dealers’ identities as “smart” and simultaneously establishes and validates their subcultural authority and membership in the symbolic group of “smart” dealers. Furthermore, drug dealers use denigrating humor in their narratives to distance their former and virtual identities from their present identities. Finally, humor also reduces dealers’ perceptions of the threats posed by police and potential snitches by casting dealers’ present identities and former reactions to the threat of punishment in a positive light. We conclude by discussing implications for narrative criminology, extant humor research, and current understanding of symbolic boundaries, identity work, and deterrence.