Court Review: Volume 43, Issue 4 – Mental Illness and the Courts: Some Reflections on Judges as Innovators

Issues raised by the influx of defendants with serious mental illnesses are some of the most important that criminal judges confront. Because of the volume of defendants with mental illnesses, the impact goes beyond that of the individual case and extends to jails, police and sheriff departments, the treatment system, and ultimately to the role of the judge. This article suggests some of the ways in which communities have attempted to respond to these issues, and highlights the fact that judges have become significant leaders as well as innovators in such efforts. Not every judge will decide to adopt one or more of these roles, but regardless, it is likely that the issues that mental illness creates for the criminal justice system will exist far into the future

Neutrino masses and mixings in non-factorizable geometry

We study bulk fermion fields in the localized gravity model with non-factorizable metric recently proposed by Randall and Sundrum, and Gogberashvili. In addition to a tower of weak-scale Kaluza-Klein states we find a zero mode for any value of the fundamental fermion mass. If the fermion mass is larger than half the curvature of the compact dimension, the zero mode can be localized on the ``hidden'' 3-brane in the Randall-Sundrum model. Identifying this mode with a right-handed neutrino provides a new way for obtaining small Dirac neutrino masses without invoking a see-saw mechanism. Cancellation of the parity anomaly requires introducing an even number of bulk fermions. This naturally leads to a strong hierarchy of neutrino masses and generically large mixing angles.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure; minor changes, typos corrected, some references added, SLAC preprint number included (version to appear in Physics Letters B

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Innocence Mortality Tax: The Impact of Wrongful Conviction on Lifespan

The wrongful conviction of innocent individuals is a growing problem for those unjustly convicted and the integrity of our legal system, with exonerees often struggling post-exoneration. Yet, too little is known about the long-term impact of wrongful convictions on those unjustly convicted. Thus, we investigated the effect of wrongful conviction on mortality and lifespan—that is, we tested for the possibility of an “innocence mortality tax.” We found that more exonerees have passed than expected when compared to U.S. death rates, and that exonerees died 13.24 years earlier than expected, given their age, gender, race/ethnicity, and incarceration length. Finally, those exonerees whose cases involved a false confession or mistaken eyewitness identification died significantly sooner than their counterparts. Our results highlight the need for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to continue to find ways to mitigate the harm done to innocent individuals unjustly convicted

Commonalities in False Guilty Plea Cases

The purpose of the present study is to identify commonalities among officially documented false guilty plea cases. This project corresponds to our comparison of known wrongful convictions by guilty plea versus trial. The dataset used was downloaded from the National Registry of Exonerations on July 3, 2020

Two Models of Pre-Plea Discovery in Criminal Cases: An Empirical Comparison

Our criminal justice system resolves most of its cases through plea bargains. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court has not required that any evidence, even exculpatory or impeachment evidence, be provided to the defense before a guilty plea. As a result, state rules on pre-plea discovery differ widely. While some jurisdictions follow an “open-file” model, imposing relatively broad discovery obligations on prosecutors early in the criminal process, others follow a more restrictive, “closed-file” model and allow the prosecution to avoid production of critical evidence either entirely or until very near the time of trial. Though the advantages and disadvantages of both models are debated, surprisingly little is known about the models’ real-world operation. In this Article, we report the results of an original empirical study in which we surveyed practicing prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys about their pre-plea discovery practices. We surveyed attorneys from Virginia and North Carolina, two adjacent states, which are demographically and geographically similar, but have notably different discovery rules. North Carolina mandates open-file discovery early in the criminal process. By contrast, Virginia protects certain critical documents, such as witness statements and police reports, from discovery. Our findings indicate that, as expected, open-file discovery can promote more informed guilty pleas. It leads to improved pre-plea disclosure of most categories of evidence. The practice is also viewed as more efficient in that it reduces discovery disputes and speeds up case dispositions. We also found little evidence that open-file discovery endangers the safety of witnesses, a common argument against the practice. Open-file discovery does not, however, appear to enhance the disclosure of certain impeachment evidence, such as the prior convictions of prosecution witnesses. Further, practitioners reported that even when the entire case file is turned over to the defense pre-plea, the file is frequently missing some information relevant to the case. The Article interprets these findings and concludes with a general endorsement of the North Carolina open-file system over the Virginia closed-file system as a better guarantor of informed decisions and efficient process in criminal cases