Arbitrariness and Discrimination in the Administration of the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis of the Nebraska Experience (1973–1999)

PART A ... I. Introduction ... II. Review of the Literature ... III. Law and Practice in the Nebraska Death Penalty System ... A. Judicial Sentencing ... B. Death Eligibility, Fact Finding, and the Weighing of Aggravation and Mitigation ... C. Comparative Proportionality Review ... 1. Proportionality Review in Penalty Trials ... a. Pre-1978 ... b. Post-1978 ... 2. Proportionality Review in the Nebraska Supreme Court ... a. Pre-1978 ... b. Post-1978 ... D. Prosecutorial Charging Practices ... E. The Implications of Ring v. Arizona for Capital Sentencing in Nebraska ... F. Conclusion PART B ... IV. Methodology, Research Design, and Measures ... A . Introduction ... B. Measures of Defendant Culpability ... 1. The Number of Statutory Aggravating Circumstances Found or Present in the Cases ... 2. Number of Statutory Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances Found or Present in the Cases ... 3. The Salient Factors Measure ... 4. Logistic Regression-Based Measures ... C. A Measure of Geographic Disparity ... D. A Note on Unadjusted and Adjusted Disparities ... E. Convergent Validity and Triangulation of Empirical Findings ... F. Omitted Variables ... V. The Disposition of Homicide Cases: 1973–1999 ... A. Capital and Non-Capital Cases ... B. The Disposition of Capital Cases ... VI. Evidence of the Impact of Defendant Culpability on Prosecutorial and Judicial Decisionmaking ... A. The Impact of Individual Statutory Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances ... B. The Number of Statutory Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances in the Cases ... 1. The Number of Aggravating Circumstances ... 2. The Number of Statutory Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances ... C. Salient Factors of the Cases ... D. Regression-Based Measures and Scales PART C ... VII. Evidence of Disparate Treatment in Charging and Sentencing Outcomes Based on the Race of the Defendant and Victim ... A. Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact Legal Theories ... B. Evidence of Disparate Treatment Based on the Race of the Defendant ... 1. Unadjusted Statewide Minority-Defendant Disparities in Charging and Sentencing Outcomes ... 2. Statewide Minority-Defendant Disparities in Charging and Sentencing Decisions Controlling for Offender Culpability ... 3. Race-of-Defendant Disparities in the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion After Adjustment for the Place of Prosecution (in Major Urban Counties v. the Counties of Greater Nebraska) ... C. Evidence of Disparate Treatment Based on the Race of the Victim ... D. Evidence of Minority-Defendant/White-Victim Disparate Treatment ... VIII. Evidence of the Disparate Impact of State Law and Policy on Minority Defendants ... A. Evidence of a Statewide Disparate Impact on Minority Defendants in the Rates that Death-Eligible Cases Advance to Penalty Trial ... B. Evidence of an Adverse Impact on Minority Defendants in the Execution of Death-Sentenced Offenders PART D ... IX. Evidence of Disparate Treatment in Charging and Sentencing Outcomes Based on the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of the Defendant and Victim ... A. Defendant SES ... B. Victim SES ... 1. Statewide Disparities ... 2. Disparities in the Major Urban Counties and Greater Nebraska ... X. Evidence of Geographic Disparities in Charging and Sentencing Outcomes ... A. Unadjusted and Adjusted Geographic Disparities ... B. Geographic Disparities Over Time ... C. Alternative Explanations for Geographic Disparities in the Rates that Cases Advance to a Penalty Trial ... 1. Disparities in Financial Resources ... 2. The Experience of Prosecutors in Capital Litigation ... 3. Judicial Sentencing Practices as a Proxy for Judicial Attitudes ... 4. The Imminence of Prosecutorial Elections ... 5. Differences in the Frequency of Problems of Proof that Compel Plea Bargains PART E ... XI. Evidence of Consistency and Selectivity in Charging and Sentencing Outcomes ... A . Introduction ... 1. Consistency ... 2. Selectivity ... B. Evidence of Inconsistency and Comparative Excessiveness ... 1. The Nebraska Data ... a. Quantitative Analysis ... b. Qualitative Analysis ... c. A Note on Proportionality Review in the Nebraska Supreme Court ... 2. Testing the Proffitt Hypothesis with a Comparative Assessment ... a. Death-Sentenced Cases in Which 70% or More of the Defendant\u27s Near Neighbors Receive a Death Sentence ... b. Death-Sentenced Cases in Which Fewer than 50% of the Defendant\u27s Near Neighbors Receive a Death Sentence ... c. Death-Sentenced Cases in Which the Death-Sentencing Rate Among the Defendant\u27s Near Neighbors is Less than the Overall Average Rate ... C. Evidence of Selectivity in the Imposition of Death Sentences ... 1. Quantitative Analysis ... 2. Qualitative Analysis PART F ... XII. Summary of Principal Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations ... A. Principal Findings and Conclusions ... 1. Race-of-Defendant and Race-of-Victim Disparate Treatment ... 2. Adverse Disparate Impact on Minority Defendants ... 3. Minority-Defendant Adverse Impact among Death Row Prisoners Executed ... 4. Disparate Treatment Based on the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of the Defendant and Victim ... 5. A Trend of Declining Death-Sentencing Rates ... 6. Geographic Disparities in the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion ... 7. Consistency and Selectivity of Charging and Sentencing Outcomes ... 8. Legislative Ambiguity Concerning Prosecutorial Charging and Judicial Sentencing Discretion ... B. Policy Recommendations ... 1. Legislative Amendments to Satisfy the Requirements of Ring v. Arizona ... 2. Legislation to Clarify the Scope of Prosecutorial and Judicial Discretion Under Section 29-2521, Which Defines the Procedure for a First-Degree Murder Sentencing Hearing ... 3. Legislation to Limit the Power of the Court to Impose a Death Sentence to Cases in Which It Believes That the Facts of the Case Clearly Justify the Imposition of a Death Sentence and That as a Matter of Law the Statutory Aggravating Circumstances Substantially [or Clearly] Outweigh the Statutory Mitigating Circumstances ... 4. Legislation to Limit the Power of Prosecutors to Seek a Death Sentence to Cases in Which the Prosecutor Believes That the Facts of the Case Justify or Clearly Justify the Imposition of a Death Sentence ... 5. Legislation to Limit Death Sentencing to Cases in Which the Defendant Had a Substantial Level of Mental Culpability (Mens Rea) ... 6. Legislation to Limit Death Sentencing to Cases in Which the Defendant\u27s Level of Criminal Culpability is Comparable to That Historically Found in Cases with Two or More Statutory Aggravating Circumstances ... 7. Legislation (a) to Require the Development of Statewide Standards for the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion in Capital Cases, and (b) to Require Prosecutorial Consultation with a Prosecutorial Advisory Committee as a Condition for the Court\u27s Convening of a Penalty Trial ... 8. Legislative Adoption of a Fairness in Death Sentencing Act ... 9. Legislation to Require the Nebraska Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Commission to Maintain a Database of All Death-Eligible Cases for Use by Courts, the State, Defense Counsel, and Scholars in the Fiel

Endothelin-1-induced alterations in phenylephrine-induced contractile responses are largely additive in physiologically diverse rabbit vasculature

ABSTRACT Endothelin-1 (ET-1) is an important modulator of vasomotor tone that is thought to participate in the etiology of cardiovascular disease by virtue of its ability to amplify the contractile responses of vascular smooth muscle cells to the effects of other vasoactive agents. Despite this fact, few studies have quantitated the expected contribution of ET-1 to the enhanced contractile responses elicited in the presence of another spasmogen. As a first step in this direction, ET-1 and phenylephrine (PE) were used to evaluate the effects of co-activation of the ET A/B or alpha-1 adrenergic receptors, respectively, on contractile responses in isolated rings of rabbit aorta, mesenteric and femoral artery, or strips of corporal tissue. Cumulative steady-state concentration-response curves (CRCs) were constructed to PE alone before the construction of a CRC to ET-1 alone, or a mixture of PE and ET-1 using a previously described drug concentration paradigm. Computer fits of the logistic equation to CRC data revealed that in all vascular tissues examined, the partial substitution of PE with ET-1 was associated with a significant vessel-dependent Ϸ3-to 30-fold leftward shift in the CRC (P Ͻ .01, Student's t test for paired samples), as judged by a significant increase in the pEC 50 (negative logarithm of the concentration of drug that elicits one-half of the calculated maximal effect), in the absence of any detectable effect on the calculated maximal contractile response (E max ) or the slope factor (). A theoretical CRC constructed using the Pö ch and Holzmann method for equiactive substitution demonstrated that the responses to mixtures of PE and ET-1 were often the result of simple additivity of agonist effects in these preparations, and thus, were "expected" based on detailed knowledge of the individual effects of these two agonists. Regardless of the precision of the Poch and Holzmann CRC in predicting the effects of this drug mixture in these vascular tissues, comparison of the "expected" contractile response with the "observed" response represents an important first step toward establishing a more uniform nomenclature for describing the physiological/pathophysiological effects of mixtures of drugs on diverse vasculature

A Virtual Laboratory for Aviation and Airspace Prognostics Research

Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), autonomy, spacecraft, and other aviation technologies, in the airspace is becoming more and more complicated, and will continue to do so in the future. Inclusion of new technology and complexity into the airspace increases the importance and difficulty of safety assurance. Additionally, testing new technologies on complex aviation systems and systems of systems can be challenging, expensive, and at times unsafe when implementing real life scenarios. The application of prognostics to aviation and airspace management may produce new tools and insight into these problems. Prognostic methodology provides an estimate of the health and risks of a component, vehicle, or airspace and knowledge of how that will change over time. That measure is especially useful in safety determination, mission planning, and maintenance scheduling. In our research, we develop a live, distributed, hardware- in-the-loop Prognostics Virtual Laboratory testbed for aviation and airspace prognostics. The developed testbed will be used to validate prediction algorithms for the real-time safety monitoring of the National Airspace System (NAS) and the prediction of unsafe events. In our earlier work1 we discussed the initial Prognostics Virtual Laboratory testbed development work and related results for milestones 1 & 2. This paper describes the design, development, and testing of the integrated tested which are part of milestone 3, along with our next steps for validation of this work. Through a framework consisting of software/hardware modules and associated interface clients, the distributed testbed enables safe, accurate, and inexpensive experimentation and research into airspace and vehicle prognosis that would not have been possible otherwise. The testbed modules can be used cohesively to construct complex and relevant airspace scenarios for research. Four modules are key to this research: the virtual aircraft module which uses the X-Plane simulator and X-PlaneConnect toolbox, the live aircraft module which connects fielded aircraft using onboard cellular communications devices, the hardware in the loop (HITL) module which connects laboratory based bench-top hardware testbeds and the research module which contains diagnostics and prognostics tools for analysis of live air traffic situations and vehicle health conditions. The testbed also features other modules for data recording and playback, information visualization, and air traffic generation. Software reliability, safety, and latency are some of the critical design considerations in development of the testbed

Protection against Experimental Melioidosis with a Synthetic manno-Heptopyranose Hexasaccharide Glycoconjugate

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Melioidosis is an emerging infectious disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei and is associated with high morbidity and mortality rates in endemic areas. Antibiotic treatment is protracted and not always successful; even with appropriate therapy, up to 40% of individuals presenting with melioidosis in Thailand succumb to infection. In these circumstances, an effective vaccine has the potential to have a dramatic impact on both the scale and the severity of disease. Currently, no vaccines are licensed for human use. A leading vaccine candidate is the capsular polysaccharide consisting of a homopolymer of unbranched 1→3 linked 2-O-acetyl-6-deoxy-β-d-manno-heptopyranose. Here, we present the chemical synthesis of this challenging antigen using a novel modular disaccharide assembly approach. The resulting hexasaccharide was coupled to the nontoxic Hc domain of tetanus toxin as a carrier protein to promote recruitment of T-cell help and provide a scaffold for antigen display. Mice immunized with the glycoconjugate developed IgM and IgG responses capable of recognizing native capsule, and were protected against infection with over 120 × LD50 of B. pseudomallei strain K96243. This is the first report of the chemical synthesis of an immunologically relevant and protective hexasaccharide fragment of the capsular polysaccharide of B. pseudomallei and serves as the rational starting point for the development of an effective licensed vaccine for this emerging infectious disease.This work was funded by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence. The mass spectral data described here were acquired on an Orbitrap Fusion mass spectrometer funded by National Institutes of Health grant 1S10OD010645-01A1

Achieving Acetylcholine Receptor Clustering in Tissue-Engineered Skeletal Muscle Constructs In vitro through a Materials-Directed Agrin Delivery Approach

Volumetric muscle loss (VML) can result from trauma, infection, congenital anomalies, or surgery, and produce permanent functional and cosmetic deficits. There are no effective treatment options for VML injuries, and recent advances toward development of muscle constructs lack the ability to achieve innervation necessary for long-term function. We sought to develop a proof-of-concept biomaterial construct that could achieve acetylcholine receptor (AChR) clustering on muscle-derived cells (MDCs) in vitro. The approach consisted of the presentation of neural (Z+) agrin from the surface of microspheres embedded with a fibrin hydrogel to muscle cells (C2C12 cell line or primary rat MDCs). AChR clustering was spatially restricted to areas of cell (C2C12)-microsphere contact when the microspheres were delivered in suspension or when they were incorporated into a thin (2D) fibrin hydrogel. AChR clusters were observed from 16 to 72 h after treatment when Z+ agrin was adsorbed to the microspheres, and for greater than 120 h when agrin was covalently coupled to the microspheres. Little to no AChR clustering was observed when agrin-coated microspheres were delivered from specially designed 3D fibrin constructs. However, cyclic stretch in combination with agrin-presenting microspheres led to dramatic enhancement of AChR clustering in cells cultured on these 3D fibrin constructs, suggesting a synergistic effect between mechanical strain and agrin stimulation of AChR clustering in vitro. These studies highlight a strategy for maintaining a physiological phenotype characterized by motor endplates of muscle cells used in tissue engineering strategies for muscle regeneration. As such, these observations may provide an important first step toward improving function of tissue-engineered constructs for treatment of VML injuries

DIDÁTICO-TECNOLÓGICO COM OSTENSIVOS E NÃO OSTENSIVOS EM ORGANIZAÇÕES PRAXEOLÓGICAS DE FUNÇÕES LOGARÍTMICAS

The process of studying logarithmic functions is of great importance for the school curriculum, for mathematical training and for the construction of descriptive models of phenomena that allow various connections within and outside mathematics, contributing to the exercise of citizenship. In this research, we reflect on the correlations between the didactic-technological and the ostensive and non-ostensive in praxeological organizations of logarithmic functions. We focus on the process of (re)construction and management of Mathematical and Didactic Organizations in the study of logarithmic functions in high school and higher education textbooks and tasks designed for computerized environments. Thus, we evidence reference models in the two treated environments and their implications in the manipulation of some notions of the logarithm object referring to ostensive non-ostensive dialectics. In this way, we found that the articulation of models present in textbooks, characteristic of the use of pencil and paper in the computerized environment, allows the visualization and manipulation of computational mathematical models that can contribute to the process of studying logarithmic functions and possibly the most varied objects mathematicians, through the relationship between their analytical and graphic expressions, among others. The results indicate that the computerized environment can promote, on the one hand, favorable conditions for learning and, on the other hand, they generate restrictions, such facts indicate the need for (re) constructions of Mathematical and Didactic Organizations in these environments.El proceso de estudio de las funciones logarítmicas es de gran importancia para el currículo escolar, para la formación matemática y para la construcción de modelos descriptivos de fenómenos que permitan diversas conexiones dentro y fuera de las matemáticas, contribuyendo al ejercicio de la ciudadanía. En esta investigación reflexionamos sobre las correlaciones entre lo didáctico-tecnológico y lo ostensivo y no ostensivo en organizaciones praxeológicas de funciones logarítmicas. Nos enfocamos en el proceso de (re)construcción y manejo de Organizaciones Matemáticas y Didácticas en el estudio de funciones logarítmicas en libros de texto de secundaria y educación superior y tareas diseñadas para ambientes computarizados. Así, evidenciamos modelos de referencia en los dos ambientes tratados y sus implicaciones en la manipulación de algunas nociones del objeto logaritmo referentes a la dialéctica ostensiva no ostensiva. De esta forma, encontramos que la articulación de modelos presentes en los libros de texto, característica del uso de lápiz y papel en el ambiente computarizado, permite la visualización y manipulación de modelos matemáticos computacionales que pueden contribuir al proceso de estudio de funciones logarítmicas y posiblemente la los más variados objetos matemáticos a través de la relación entre sus expresiones analíticas y gráficas, entre otros. Los resultados indican que el entorno informatizado puede promover, por un lado, condiciones favorables para el aprendizaje y, por otro lado, generar restricciones, tales hechos indican la necesidad de (re)construcciones de Organizaciones Matemáticas y Didácticas en estos entornos.O processo de estudo de funções logarítmicas apresenta grande importância para o currículo escolar, para a formação matemática e na construção de modelos descritivos de fenômenos que permitem várias conexões dentro e fora da matemática contribuindo para o exercício da cidadania. Nesta pesquisa realizamos reflexões referentes as correlações entre o didático-tecnológico com ostensivos e não ostensivos em organizações praxeológicas de funções logarítmicas. Enfocamos o processo de (re)construção e gestão de Organizações Matemáticas e Didáticas no estudo de funções logarítmicas em livros didáticos do ensino médio e superior e tarefas idealizadas para ambientes informatizados. Assim evidenciamos modelos de referência nos dois ambientes tratados e suas implicações na manipulação de algumas noções do objeto logaritmo referentes a dialética ostensivo não ostensivo. Dessa forma, constatamos que a articulação de modelos presentes em livros didáticos, característico de uso de lápis e papel ao ambiente informatizado permite a visualização e manipulação de modelos matemáticos computacionais que podem contribuir com o processo de estudo das funções logarítmicas e possivelmente dos mais variados objetos matemáticos, por meio da relação entre suas expressões analíticas e gráficas, dentre outras. Os resultados indicam que o ambiente informatizado pode promover por um lado, condições favoráveis ao aprendizado e por outro geraram restrições, tais fatos indicam a necessidade de (re)construções das Organizações Matemáticas e Didáticas nesses ambientes

Status of the QCDSP project

We describe the completed 8,192-node, 0.4Tflops machine at Columbia as well as the 12,288-node, 0.6Tflops machine assembled at the RIKEN Brookhaven Research Center. Present performance as well as our experience in commissioning these large machines is presented. We outline our on-going physics program and explain how the configuration of the machine is varied to support a wide range of lattice QCD problems, requiring a variety of machine sizes. Finally a brief discussion is given of future prospects for large-scale lattice QCD machines.Comment: LATTICE98(machines), 3 pages, 1 picture, 1 figur