Should the Insanity Defense be Abolished - An Introduction to the Debate

As the plans for the debate began to unfold I was concerned about the possibility that the subject matter might already be jaded, or in any event no longer would be a hot topic for our potential audience. Being quite familiar with the writings of our Advocates and therefore particularly susceptible to the reader-listener rehash syndrome, I was nonetheless hopeful that what had the potential for being old-hat would instead be new and interesting to those members of the audience not professionally committed to intimate familiarity with the subject matter. While I had expected that these issues, aired in the setting of a debate, would be more exciting and immediate than even the extraordinary written scholarship of both erudite visitors, I hadn\u27t expected the remarkable level of intensity, originality and profundity to which all of us were treated

Should the Insanity Defense be Abolished - An Introduction to the Debate

As the plans for the debate began to unfold I was concerned about the possibility that the subject matter might already be jaded, or in any event no longer would be a hot topic for our potential audience. Being quite familiar with the writings of our Advocates and therefore particularly susceptible to the reader-listener rehash syndrome, I was nonetheless hopeful that what had the potential for being old-hat would instead be new and interesting to those members of the audience not professionally committed to intimate familiarity with the subject matter. While I had expected that these issues, aired in the setting of a debate, would be more exciting and immediate than even the extraordinary written scholarship of both erudite visitors, I hadn\u27t expected the remarkable level of intensity, originality and profundity to which all of us were treated

Modulation of Queuine Uptake and Incorporation into tRNA by Protein Kinase C and Protein Phosphatase

It has been suggested that the rate of queuine uptake into cultured human fibroblasts is controlled by phosphorylation levels within the cell. We show that the uptake of queuine is stimulated by activators of protein kinase C (PKC) and inhibitors of protein phosphatase; while inhibitors of PKC, and down-regulation of PKC by chronic exposure to phorbol esters inhibit the uptake of queuine into cultured human fibroblasts. Activators of cAMP- and cGMP-dependent kinases exert no effect on the uptake of queuine into fibroblast cell cultures. These studies suggest that PKC directly supports the activity of the queuine uptake mechanism, and that protein phosphatase activity in the cell acts to reverse this. Regardless of the modulation of uptake rate, the level of intracellular queuine base saturates in 6 h. However, there is still an effect on the incorporation rate of queuine into tRNA of fibroblast cultures even after 24 h. We now show that the incorporation of queuine into tRNA in cultured human fibroblasts by tRNA-guanine ribosyltransferase (TGRase) is also stimulated by activators of PKC and inhibitors of protein phosphatase; while inhibitors of PKC decrease the activity of this enzyme. These studies suggest that PKC supports both the cellular transport of queuine and the activity of TGRase in cultured human fibroblasts, and that protein phosphatase activity in fibroblasts acts to reverse this phenomenon. A kinase-phosphatase control system, that is common to controlling both intracellular signal transduction and many enzyme systems, appears to be controlling the availability of the queuine substrate and the mechanism for its incorporation into tRNA. Since hypomodification of transfer RNA with queuine is commonly observed in undifferentiated, rapidly growing and neoplastically transformed cells, phosphorylation of the queuine modification system may be a critical regulatory mechanism for the modification of tRNA and subsequent control of cell growth and differentiation

Decoding Guilty Minds

A central tenet of Anglo-American penal law is that in order for an actor to be found criminally liable, a proscribed act must be accompanied by a guilty mind. While it is easy to understand the importance of this principle in theory, in practice it requires jurors and judges to decide what a person was thinking months or years earlier at the time of the alleged offense, either about the results of his conduct or about some elemental fact (such as whether the briefcase he is carrying contains drugs). Despite the central importance of this task in the administration of criminal justice, there has been very little research investigating how people go about making these decisions, and how these decisions relate to their intuitions about culpability. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms that govern this task is important for the law, not only to explore the possibility of systemic biases and errors in attributions of culpability but also to probe the intuitions that underlie them. In a set of six exploratory studies reported here, we examine the way in which individuals infer others’ legally relevant mental states about elemental facts, using the framework established over fifty years ago by the Model Penal Code (“MPC”). The widely adopted MPC framework delineates and defines the four now-familiar culpable mental states: purpose, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence. Our studies reveal that with little to no training, jury-eligible Americans can apply the MPC framework in a manner that is largely congruent with the basic assumptions of the MPC’s mental state hierarchy. However, our results also indicate that subjects’ intuitions about the level of culpability warranting criminal punishment diverge significantly from prevailing legal practice; subjects tend to regard recklessness as a sufficient basis for punishment under circumstances where the legislatures and courts tend to require knowledge

Parsing the Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Third-Party Punishment

The evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood. Using a brain-scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we implemented a novel experimental design to functionally dissociate the mechanisms underlying evaluation, integration, and decision. This work revealed that multiple parts of the brain – some analytic, some subconscious or emotional – work in a systematic pattern to decide blameworthiness, assess harms, integrate those two decisions, and then ultimately select how a person should be punished. Specifically, harm and mental state evaluations are conducted in two different brain networks and then combined in the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate areas of the brain, while the amygdala acts as a pivotal hub of the interaction between harm and mental state. This integrated information is then used by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when the brain is making a decision on punishment amount. These findings provide a blueprint of the brain mechanisms by which neutral third parties make punishment decisions

Activation of Transfer RNA-Guanine Ribosyltransferase by Protein Kinase C

Transfer RNA-guanine ribosyltransferase (TGRase) irreversibly incorporates queuine into the first position in the anticodon of four tRNA isoacceptors. Rat brain protein kinase C (PKC) was shown to stimulate rat liver TG Rase activity, TGRase preparations derived from rat liver have been observed to decrease in activity over time in storage at -20 or -70°C, Contamination of the samples by phosphatases was indicated by a p-nitrophenylphosphate conversion test, The addition of micromolar concentrations of the phosphatase inhibitors sodium pyrophosphate and sodium fluoride into TGRase isolation buffers resulted in a greater return of TGRase activity than without these inhibitors, Inactive TGRase preparations were reactivated to their original activity with the addition of PKC, In assays combining both TGRase and PKC enzymes, inhibitors of protein kinase C (sphingosine, staurosporine, H-7 and calphostin C) all blocked the reactivation of TGRase, whereas activators of protein kinase C (calcium, diacylglycerol and phosphatidyl serine) increased the activity of TGRase, None of the PKC modulators affected TGRase activity directly, Alkaline phosphatase, when added to assays, decreased the activity of TGRase and also blocked the reactivation of TGRase with PKC, Denaturing PAGE and autoradiography was performed on TGRase isolates that had been labelled with 32P by PKC, The resulting strong 60 kDa band (containing the major site for phosphorylation) and weak 34.5 kDa band (containing the TGRase activity) are suggested to associate to make up a 104 kDa heterodimer that comprises the TGRase enzyme, This was corroberated by native and denaturing size-exclusion chromatography These results suggest that PKC-dependent phosphorylation of TGRase is tied to efficient enzymatic function and therefore control of the queuine modification of tRNA

Parsing the Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Third-Party Punishment.

UnlabelledThe evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood. Using fMRI, here we implement a novel experimental design to functionally dissociate the mechanisms underlying evaluation, integration, and decision that were conflated in previous studies of third-party punishment. Behaviorally, the punishment decision is primarily defined by a superadditive interaction between harm and mental state, with subjects weighing the interaction factor more than the single factors of harm and mental state. On a neural level, evaluation of harms engaged brain areas associated with affective and somatosensory processing, whereas mental state evaluation primarily recruited circuitry involved in mentalization. Harm and mental state evaluations are integrated in medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate structures, with the amygdala acting as a pivotal hub of the interaction between harm and mental state. This integrated information is used by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at the time of the decision to assign an appropriate punishment through a distributed coding system. Together, these findings provide a blueprint of the brain mechanisms by which neutral third parties render punishment decisions.Significance statementPunishment undergirds large-scale cooperation and helps dispense criminal justice. Yet it is currently unknown precisely how people assess the mental states of offenders, evaluate the harms they caused, and integrate those two components into a single punishment decision. Using a new design, we isolated these three processes, identifying the distinct brain systems and activities that enable each. Additional findings suggest that the amygdala plays a crucial role in mediating the interaction of mental state and harm information, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a crucial, final-stage role, both in integrating mental state and harm information and in selecting a suitable punishment amount. These findings deepen our understanding of how punishment decisions are made, which may someday help to improve them

Predicting the knowledge–recklessness distinction in the human brain

Criminal convictions require proof that a prohibited act was performed in a statutorily specified mental state. Different legal consequences, including greater punishments, are mandated for those who act in a state of knowledge, compared with a state of recklessness. Existing research, however, suggests people have trouble classifying defendants as knowing, rather than reckless, even when instructed on the relevant legal criteria. We used a machine-learning technique on brain imaging data to predict, with high accuracy, which mental state our participants were in. This predictive ability depended on both the magnitude of the risks and the amount of information about those risks possessed by the participants. Our results provide neural evidence of a detectable difference in the mental state of knowledge in contrast to recklessness and suggest, as a proof of principle, the possibility of inferring from brain data in which legally relevant category a person belongs. Some potential legal implications of this result are discussed

The Ursinus Weekly, April 7, 1977

Ursinus news in brief: New CCC organized; Class elections to be held; Volunteers needed at Norristown; Exec. Comm. meets with Pres.; Late examination fee cancelled; Night school requirement changed • WCC meets food service rep. • New asst. to Harris chosen • Cub and Key inducts new members • Comment: A fond farewell to a close friend; Initial optimism of a new editor • Weekly special: FBI warns of more terrorist attacks • Letters to the editor • Movie attack: Bomb renamed • A low-scale of relief • Alumni assoc. gives gift • Dog Day afternoon • Forum review: Horrors recalled • Meisters prepare tour • Women\u27s basketball reaches nationals • USGA survey • Senior dance • 1977 baseball: title bound? • Bears begin seasonhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1069/thumbnail.jp