Collateral Review of Career Offender Sentences: The Case for Coram Nobis

Occasionally, criminals correctly interpret the law while courts err. Litigation pursuant to the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) includes numerous examples. The ACCA imposes harsher sentences upon felons in possession of firearms with prior violent felony convictions. Over time, courts defined violent so contrary to its common meaning that it eventually came to encompass driving under the influence, unwanted touching, and the failure to report to correctional facilities. However, in a series of recent decisions, the Supreme Court has attempted to clarify the meaning of violent in the context of the ACCA and, in the process, excluded such offenses. The ultimate definition of violent and resulting litigation also implicate career offender sentences imposed under the Sentencing Guidelines, because of similarities in the language of the Guidelines and the ACCA. This Article is the first to examine the availability of collateral review of erroneously imposed career offender sentences resulting from the fluctuating definition of the term violent. The following offers an overview of the two traditional methods of collateral review available to federal prisoners, motions to vacate and habeas corpus petitions, and assesses the viability of each method. This Article argues for use of the relatively obscure writ of error coram nobis, a safety valve for those who are unable to obtain relief through a motion to vacate or a traditional habeas proceeding. This Article concludes that, despite the writ\u27s disfavored status, courts should dust off the 16th century remedy. This would alleviate both the injustice of telling prisoners who correctly interpreted the law that they were right, but are now without remedy, and the social waste associated with unnecessary incarceration

Collateral Review of Career Offender Sentences: The Case for Coram Nobis

Occasionally, criminals correctly interpret the law while courts err. Litigation pursuant to the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) includes numerous examples. The ACCA imposes harsher sentences upon felons in possession of firearms with prior violent felony convictions. Over time, courts defined violent so contrary to its common meaning that it eventually came to encompass driving under the influence, unwanted touching, and the failure to report to correctional facilities. However, in a series of recent decisions, the Supreme Court has attempted to clarify the meaning of violent in the context of the ACCA and, in the process, excluded such offenses. The ultimate definition of violent and resulting litigation also implicate career offender sentences imposed under the Sentencing Guidelines, because of similarities in the language of the Guidelines and the ACCA. This Article is the first to examine the availability of collateral review of erroneously imposed career offender sentences resulting from the fluctuating definition of the term violent. The following offers an overview of the two traditional methods of collateral review available to federal prisoners, motions to vacate and habeas corpus petitions, and assesses the viability of each method. This Article argues for use of the relatively obscure writ of error coram nobis, a safety valve for those who are unable to obtain relief through a motion to vacate or a traditional habeas proceeding. This Article concludes that, despite the writ\u27s disfavored status, courts should dust off the 16th century remedy. This would alleviate both the injustice of telling prisoners who correctly interpreted the law that they were right, but are now without remedy, and the social waste associated with unnecessary incarceration

A dialogical model of case law dynamics

We describe a set of dialogue moves which give a procedure to model the development of case law over a sequence of cases

Perceptual adaptation by normally hearing listeners to a simulated "hole" in hearing

Simulations of cochlear implants have demonstrated that the deleterious effects of a frequency misalignment between analysis bands and characteristic frequencies at basally shifted simulated electrode locations are significantly reduced with training. However, a distortion of frequency-to-place mapping may also arise due to a region of dysfunctional neurons that creates a "hole" in the tonotopic representation. This study simulated a 10 mm hole in the mid-frequency region. Noise-band processors were created with six output bands (three apical and three basal to the hole). The spectral information that would have been represented in the hole was either dropped or reassigned to bands on either side. Such reassignment preserves information but warps the place code, which may in itself impair performance. Normally hearing subjects received three hours of training in two reassignment conditions. Speech recognition improved considerably with training. Scores were much lower in a baseline (untrained) condition where information from the hole region was dropped. A second group of subjects trained in this dropped condition did show some improvement; however, scores after training were significantly lower than in the reassignment conditions. These results are consistent with the view that speech processors should present the most informative frequency range irrespective of frequency misalignment. 0 2006 Acoustical Society of America

Orthopaedic nurses’ engagement in clinical research; an exploration of ideas, facilitators and challenges

Background: Previous international studies have identified individual and organisational barriers to nurses’ research utilisation, but there is little data reporting on nurses’ engagement in research design and/or delivery, particularly within the orthopaedic speciality. Aim: To explore orthopaedic nurses’ views regarding the research priorities for neuro-musculoskeletal care and the perceived barriers and facilitators associated with their engagement in the research process. Methods: A single centre mixed methods study (n=75) collected data via a survey and 14 focus group discussions. Findings: Our sample of clinical orthopaedic nurses showed little evidence of research engagement. Research priorities focused on 1. Understanding and improving patient and staff experiences 2. Improving processes, systems and workload models 3. Interventions to improve clinical outcomes. Key themes arising from the focus group discussion data were research activity, priorities and motivation, culture and leadership, and resources. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that there is still significant work to do build sufficient research capacity and capability within the nursing workforce. Key to success will be developing effective leaders, who can create a positive and supportive research culture across an organisation to strengthen the research voice of nursing, which will drive improvements in future care

An explainable approach to deducing outcomes in european court of human rights cases using ADFs

In this paper we present an argumentation-based approach to representing and reasoning about a domain of law that has previously been addressed through a machine learning approach. The domain concerns cases that all fall within the remit of a specific Article within the European Court of Human Rights. We perform a comparison between the approaches, based on two criteria: ability of the model to accurately replicate the decision that was made in the real life legal cases within the particular domain, and the quality of the explanation provided by the models. Our initial results show that the system based on the argumentation approach improves on the machine learning results in terms of accuracy, and can explain its outcomes in terms of the issue on which the case turned, and the factors that were crucial in arriving at the conclusion

When and why people misestimate future feelings: Identifying strengths and weaknesses in affective forecasting.

People try to make decisions that will improve their lives and make them happy, and to do so, they rely on affective forecasts-predictions about how future outcomes will make them feel. Decades of research suggest that people are poor at predicting how they will feel and that they commonly overestimate the impact that future events will have on their emotions. Recent work reveals considerable variability in forecasting accuracy. This investigation tested a model of affective forecasting that captures this variability in bias by differentiating emotional intensity, emotional frequency, and mood. Two field studies examined affective forecasting in college students receiving grades on a midterm exam (Study 1, N = 643), and U.S. citizens after the outcome of the 2016 presidential election (Study 2, N = 706). Consistent with the proposed model, participants were more accurate in forecasting the intensity of their emotion and less accurate in forecasting emotion frequency and mood. Overestimation of the effect of the event on mood increased over time since the event. Three experimental studies examined mechanisms that contribute to differential forecasting accuracy. Biases in forecasting intensity were caused by changes in perceived event importance; biases in forecasting frequency of emotion were caused by changes in the frequency of thinking about the event. This is the first direct evidence mapping out strengths and weaknesses for different types of affective forecasts and the factors that contribute to this pattern. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Intensive care discharge summaries for general practice staff: a focus group study

Understanding how patients and relatives can be supported after hospital discharge is a UK research priority. Intensive Care Unit (ICU) discharge summaries are a simple way of providing GPs with the information they require to coordinate ongoing care, but little evidence is available to guide best practice

Deletions of the derivative chromosome 9 occur at the time of the Philadelphia translocation and provide a powerful and independent prognostic indicator in chronic myeloid leukemia

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is characterized by formation of the BCR-ABL fusion gene, usually as a consequence of the Philadelphia (Ph) translocation between chromosomes 9 and 22. Large deletions on the derivative chromosome 9 have recently been reported, but it was unclear whether deletions arose during disease progression or at the time of the Ph translocation. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis was used to assess the deletion status of 253 patients with CML. The strength of deletion status as a prognostic indicator was then compared to the Sokal and Hasford scoring systems. The frequency of deletions was similar at diagnosis and after disease progression but was significantly increased in patients with variant Ph translocations. In patients with a deletion, all Ph+ metaphases carried the deletion. The median survival of patients with and without deletions was 38 months and 88 months, respectively (P = .0001). By contrast the survival difference between Sokal or Hasford high-risk and non-high-risk patients was of only borderline significance (P = .057 and P = .034). The results indicate that deletions occur at the time of the Ph translocation. An apparently simple reciprocal translocation may therefore result in considerable genetic heterogeneity ab initio, a concept that is likely to apply to other malignancies associated with translocations. Deletion status is also a powerful and independent prognostic factor for patients with CML. The prognostic significance of deletion status should now be studied prospectively and, if confirmed, should be incorporated into management decisions and the analysis of clinical trials. (C) 2001 by The American Society of Hematology

Summa Contra Ontologiam

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11896548_37Revised Selected Papers of EDBT 2006 Workshops PhD, DataX, IIDB, IIHA, ICSNW, QLQP, PIM, PaRMA, and Reactivity on the Web, Munich, Germany, March 26-31, 2006This paper is a critical analysis of the concept of ontology thus as it is used in contemporary computing science. It identifies three main problems with such a concept, two of which are intrinsic to it and one of which is extrinsic, so to speak, being related to the use that of ontology is made in applications. The first problem with ontology is that the only accepted definition of its main artifact is teleological rather than structural as it would be proper in computing science. The second problem is that claiming that ontology is in any way a semantic discipline requires such a limited and outdated notion of semantic to be to all practical purposes useless. The third and final problem is that the limitations and misconceptions of ontology might make it a limiting factor, rather than a help, for many of the applications for which it is sought. The article concludes that a profound reconsideration of the relation between computers and semantics might be overdue