Tasing the Constitution: Conducted Electrical Weapons, Other Forceful Arrest Means, and the Validity of Subsequent Constitutional Rights Waivers

Conducted electrical weapons (CEWs)—the most famous and widely used of which are offered under the TASER brand—are ubiquitous tools of law enforcement, carried by the vast majority of law enforcement officers and routinely deployed. These devices subdue targets by coursing electric current through their bodies, thereby causing individuals to collapse as their muscles involuntarily contract. Yet this method of operation has raised concerns—voiced by researchers, advocates, and criminal defendants alike—that CEWs influence cognitive capacity in addition to muscle function as electric current potentially transits through the brain via the central nervous system. In the context of an arrest, this implicates criminal suspects’ ability to understand Miranda warnings given by officers and to competently waive their constitutional rights against self-incrimination and to counsel. Some have gone so far as to recommend a mandated delay between when suspects are tased and when officers may administer Miranda warnings in order to protect individuals’ rights. Intimate understandings of the law of Miranda v. Arizona and the true effects of CEWs on cognitive capacity are critical for determining the prudence of this recommendation, and have broader implications for the criminal justice system. This Article is the first to conduct a thorough survey and analysis of the law of Miranda with regard to how courts determine whether individuals’ waivers of their constitutional rights following Miranda warnings are knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. Ultimately, cognitive capacity is an important factor, but, in examining this faculty, courts generally rely most heavily on subjective indicia of mental acuity manifested at the time Miranda warnings were administered—e.g., reasoning ability, tone, bodily movements, and temperament. Objective indicia of mental acuity—i.e., those shown through empirical research to signal cognitive ability, such as age, education, intelligence, and blood alcohol content—are routinely treated as less valuable than subjective indicia, particularly when the two are in opposition. This presents a high bar for empirical research on the cognitive effects of CEWs to scale in order to meaningfully influence court determinations of the legitimacy of rights waivers. This Article is also the first to conduct a comprehensive survey and examination of the literature addressing the cognitive effects of CEWs and compare these effects to those of other forceful arrest methods. Studies reveal that, rather than having a unique effect on cognition through some interaction between electric current and the brain, CEWs actually appear to impact mental faculties through a general stress effect, which other forceful methods of arrest have as well—e.g., physical altercation, police dog attack, and pepper spray. Therefore, an exceptional rule requiring a delay in administering Miranda warnings to suspects subject to CEWs does not seem appropriate. Nevertheless, the literature does show forceful arrest methods meaningfully affecting individual mental acuity. While more research is necessary to more finely deduce the extent of these impacts, they appear to be such that courts should consider a forceful arrest close enough in time to the administration of a Miranda warning to be a negative factor in assessing defendants’ competence to waive their rights, similar to evidence indicating low intelligence or intoxication at the time of waiver

Cholinergic Modulation of Attention.

Rodent studies indicate that cholinergic inputs to frontoparietal cortex play an important role in signal detection, especially in challenging conditions. fMRI studies have likewise shown frontoparietal activity in humans under task conditions parallel to those used in the rodent studies. While these parallels are suggestive, the degree to which the fMRI activation patterns seen in humans reflect cholinergic activity remains unknown. The studies in this dissertation provide stronger evidence for cholinergic influences on the brain systems supporting attention in humans, and begin to delineate how those influences may differ by brain region and interact with other (e.g. dopaminergic) influences to shape cognition and behavior. First, an electroencephalography study showed that gamma synchronization, which previous studies have linked to cholinergic activity and attentional control, increases in response to a distractor challenge. Furthermore, across participants, greater increases in gamma synchronization in parietal cortex were associated with better distractor resistance, whereas greater increases in gamma dispersion in right prefrontal cortex were associated with greater response time variations thought to reflect difficulty in maintaining consistent control. Another series of experiments leveraged variability in cholinergic integrity (measured using PET) in Parkinson’s patients as a natural experiment to determine cholinergic contributions to different aspects of attention and cognitive control. Thalamic cholinergic integrity made the strongest independent contribution to variation in the ability to detect signals under perceptual challenge, whereas cortical cholinergic integrity was the best independent predictor of the ability to resist content-rich distractors likely to draw attention away from the target signal. Exploratory analyses suggested that parietal cholinergic integrity might play an especially important role in resisting these distractors, consistent with the electroencephalography study results. Finally, a secondary data analysis of a larger sample suggested that in conditions making strong demands on executive control, there may be mutual compensation between cholinergic and dopaminergic systems. To summarize, the present findings provide further evidence for cholinergic contributions to frontoparietal brain systems supporting signal detection, attention, and cognitive control, more precisely define the contributions of thalamic, prefrontal, and parietal inputs, and suggest the possibility of mutual compensation with the dopaminergic system in situations of high executive demand.PhDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111387/1/kaminkim_1.pd

Effects of Dysgraphia on Teachers\u27 Perceptions of A Student\u27s Capabilities, Intelligence, and School Performance

The focus of this study will explore how the dysgraphic disability of one child affects teachers\u27 perceptions of that child\u27s capabilities, intelligence, and performance of daily tasks associated with school and schoolwork. The child will use the Tablet PC\u27s handwriting recognition technology to determine if the assistive technology tool improves the child\u27s school performance and his ability to produce legible notes and papers. Worksheets were downloaded into the Tablet PC prior to use in school so that the child could complete all classroom work on the Tablet PC. [This student benefited from being able to tum hand written notes into text. This students\u27 handwriting improved as a result of computer-aided practice. The use of the Tablet PC by a child with dysgraphia enables the child to be independent of the need of teacher-produced notes or a scribe.] Bracket material needs to be supported by data yet to be collected

Extravehicular activities limitations study. Volume 1: Physiological limitations to extravehicular activity in space

This report contains the results of a comprehensive literature search on physiological aspects of EVA. Specifically, the topics covered are: (1) Oxygen levels; (2) Optimum EVA work; (3) Food and Water; (4) Carbon dioxide levels; (5) Repetitive decompressions; (6) Thermal, and (7) Urine collection. The literature was assessed on each of these topics, followed by statements on conclusions and recommended future research needs

The role of context in decolonising engineering curriculums in proudly South African universities: a cybernetic perspective

Abstract: This paper addresses the epistemological challenges facing South African Public Universities in light of the #FeesMustFall campaign and the associated outcomes. Of particular interest are the academics who are to embrace the changes while they remain in the education system. The decolonisation of knowledge, which is still not clearly understood nor agreed upon, necessitates a rapid review of the status quo in the major universities and how they conduct their business. While transformation and decolonisation are not synonymous, the universities will be undergoing transformation to address the decolonisation needs of the majority of its students, which has already created dilemmas for the academics who have largely followed a Eurocentric approach, and are now to implement the changes addressing decolonisation. The immediate aspects facing the academics are the undefined curriculum changes, as well as the new teaching and learning strategies, which need to reflect the epistemology of the students addressing an Afrocentricity that has not been embraced in the past. A cybernetic perspective relying on Pask’s Conversation Theory may be integral in allowing the academics the skill to contextualise the curriculum, embracing those who are the consumers of this new co-created locally generated knowledge

Why Kindergarten Is Too Late: The Need for Early Childhood Remedies in School Finance Litigation

In 2006, Jim Ryan, then a law professor, now dean of Harvard University’s School of Education, published A Constitutional Right to Preschool, a seminal article that argued that courts should require states to fund public preschools as a means of abiding by their constitutional obligations to provide all children adequate educational opportunities. Though very few courts have ever imposed such a requirement, and all but one of these rulings have been eliminated on appeal, Ryan noted the political popularity of universal preschool and a growing trend among states to provide free pre-kindergarten as grounds for optimism that courts might be more open to ordering preschool remedies in future litigation

Dignity and human enhancement

This paper examines the concept of human dignity as it functions in arguments about using technology to create human enhancements. The concern that using technology to create human enhancements may be a threat to human dignity is analyzed in order to determine whether the concern is warranted. It is concluded that the concern, as it is framed in the examined arguments, does not appear to be legitimate

Hope College Abstracts: 20th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

The 20th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity was held online on April 30, 2021. The event featured student-faculty collaborative research projects presented remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This program is a record reflective of those projects between the 2020-2021 academic year