Remaining Silent in Indian Country: Self-Incrimination and Grants of Immunity for Tribal Court Defendants

A defendant in state and federal courts is entitled to a constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The Fifth Amendment establishes this privilege, which can only be overcome through a voluntary waiver or by the granting of an appropriate level of immunity. Those grants of immunity were made mutually binding on the state and federal governments in Kastigar v. United States and Murphy v. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. However, in Talton v. Mayes, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments do not limit the conduct of the more than 560 federally recognized Indian tribes within the boundaries of the United States. In response, Congress exercised its plenary power and passed the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA). Under federal law, ICRA extended many, but not all, protections afforded under the Bill of Rights to tribal defendants without any required action from the tribes; many of the provisions are verbatim from the Constitution’s amendments. However, the complicated distribution of jurisdiction amongst sovereigns, as well as the tribal authority to create and implement unique constitutions and systems of justice, calls into question the standard by which to evaluate violations of the privilege against self-incrimination in tribal court. Furthermore, rare examples exist in which a court of any jurisdiction has considered or extended the mutually binding nature of grants of immunity and the use of testimony compelled by a separate jurisdiction to include tribal courts. This Comment suggests that violations of ICRA’s protections against self-incrimination be evaluated under a Fifth Amendment standard, utilizing U.S. Supreme Court precedent. This approach ensures a predictable analysis that is consistent with the legislative intent of ICRA and minimizes potential complications upon federal habeas review. This Comment further suggests that the universal application of Fifth Amendment precedent is a prerequisite for mutual and binding recognition of tribal, state, and federal grants of immunity. Mutual recognition places tribal courts on equal footing with state and federal courts. Further, a defendant facing prosecution in two or more courts exercising concurrent jurisdiction benefits when courts extend and recognize binding grants of immunity. Lastly, when grants of immunity apply in each jurisdiction, tribal courts and communities are empowered to pursue avenues of justice unique to tribal traditions and culture

Perturbation of strong Feller semigroups and well-posedness of semilinear stochastic equations on Banach spaces

We prove a Miyadera-Voigt type perturbation theorem for strong Feller semigroups. Using this result, we prove well-posedness of the semilinear stochastic equation dX(t) = [AX(t) + F(X(t))]dt + GdW_H(t) on a separable Banach space E, assuming that F is bounded and measurable and that the associated linear equation, i.e. the equation with F = 0, is well-posed and its transition semigroup is strongly Feller and satisfies an appropriate gradient estimate. We also study existence and uniqueness of invariant measures for the associated transition semigroup.Comment: Revision based on the referee's comment

Simplified models of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation damping

In previous work the authors analysed the global properties of an approximate model of radiation damping for charged particles. This work is put into context and related to the original motivation of understanding approximations used in the study of gravitational radiation damping. It is examined to what extent the results obtained previously depend on the particular model chosen. Comparisons are made with other models for gravitational and electromagnetic fields. The relation of the kinetic model for which theorems were proved to certain many-particle models with radiation damping is exhibited

What Fraction of the Young Clusters in the Antennae Galaxies are "Missing"?

A reexamination of the correspondence between 6 cm radio continuum sources and young star clusters in the Antennae galaxies indicates that 85 % of the strong thermal sources have optical counterparts, once the optical image is shifted 1.2 arcsec to the southwest. A sample of 37 radio-optical matches are studied in detail showing correlations between radio properties and a variety of optical characteristics. There is a strong correlation between the radio flux and the intrinsic optical brightness. In particular, the brightest radio source is also the intrinsically brightest optical cluster (WS80). It is also the most extincted cluster in the sample, the strongest CO source and the strongest 15 micron source . Furthermore, the brightest ten radio sources are all amongst the youngest clusters with ages in the range 0 - 4 Myr and extinctions from A_V = 0.5 to 7.6 mag (with a median value of 2.6 mag). Only a few of the very red clusters originally discovered by Whitmore & Schweizer are radio sources, contrary to earlier suggestions. Finally, a new hybrid method of determining cluster ages has been developed using both UBVI colors and H_alpha equivalent widths to break the age-reddening degeneracy.Comment: 51 pages, 13 postscript figures, LaTex. To appear in the Astronomical Journal, 124, 2002, Septembe

Feasibility study of full-reactor gas core demonstration test

Separate studies of nuclear criticality, flow patterns, and thermodynamics for the gas core reactor concept have all given positive indications of its feasibility. However, before serious design for a full scale gas core application can be made, feasibility must be shown for operation with full interaction of the nuclear, thermal, and hydraulic effects. A minimum sized, and hence minimum expense, test arrangement is considered for a full gas core configuration. It is shown that the hydrogen coolant scattering effects dominate the nuclear considerations at elevated temperatures. A cavity diameter of somewhat larger than 4 ft (122 cm) will be needed if temperatures high enough to vaporize uranium are to be achieved

Exact f(R)f(R)-cosmological model coming from the request of the existence of a Noether symmetry

We present an $f(R)$-cosmological model with an exact analytic solution, coming from the request of the existence of a Noether symmetry, which is able to describe a dust-dominated decelerated phase before the current accelerated phase of the universe.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contribution to the proceedings of Spanish Relativity Meeting 2008, Salamanca, Sapin, 15-19 September 200