The Role and Responsibility of Defense Counsel

How does a defense attorney\u27s role change when defending a high-profile client? Beyond traditional legal defense, must a modern defense attorney seek to protect a client\u27s public image? When speaking with the media, what rules, if any, should constrain a defense attorney\u27s behavior? Does media coverage affect the fairness of a trial? These are some of the questions dealt with in Panel #4: The Role Of Defense Counsel, moderated by Robert Mosteller, and featuring Laurie Levenson, Michael Tigar and Harold Haddon. Laurie Levenson begins the discussion by outlining some of the rules governing attorney behavior in the media, with special emphasis on the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Next, Michael Tigar discusses how the press has traditionally served as a watchdog against government misconduct in high-profile cases, and how media coverage of cases from his own career has helped his clients. Lastly, Harold Haddon provides a word of caution about the dangers attorneys face in using the media in high-profile cases and discusses how media coverage can hurt defendants by leading to premature public judgment. Questions/themes/discussion topics ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 3.6: Trial Publicity Attorney conduct not prohibited by ABA MRPC 3.6 Media gag orders Allowing video cameras in the courtroom Proposed rules to govern legal commentators unconnected to a proceeding Historic instances of media coverage acting as a judicial watchdog Examples of media coverage aiding defendants in high-profile cases The effect of defense attorney\u27 statements on the public perception of defendants The difficulty of changing public perception of a defendant\u27s guilt or innocenc

A novel role for the rat retrosplenial cortex in cognitive control

By virtue of its frontal and hippocampal connections, the retrosplenial cortex is uniquely placed to support cognition. Here, we tested whether the retrosplenial cortex is required for frontal tasks analogous to the Stroop Test, i.e., for the ability to select between conflicting responses and inhibit responding to task-irrelevant cues. Rats first acquired two instrumental conditional discriminations, one auditory and one visual, set in two distinct contexts. As a result, rats were rewarded for pressing either the right or left lever when a particular auditory or visual signal was present. In extinction, rats received compound stimuli that either comprised the auditory and visual elements that signaled the same lever response (congruent) or signaled different lever responses (incongruent) during training. On conflict (incongruent) trials, lever selection by sham-operated animals followed the stimulus element that had previously been trained in that same test context, whereas animals with retrosplenial cortex lesions failed to disambiguate the conflicting response cues. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that this abnormality on conflict trials was not due to a failure in distinguishing the contexts. Rather, these data reveal the selective involvement of the rat retrosplenial cortex in response conflict, and so extend the frontal system underlying cognitive control

Electric-Field-Induced Mott Insulating States in Organic Field-Effect Transistors

We consider the possibility that the electrons injected into organic field-effect transistors are strongly correlated. A single layer of acenes can be modelled by a Hubbard Hamiltonian similar to that used for the kappa-(BEDT-TTF)(2)X family of organic superconductors. The injected electrons do not necessarily undergo a transition to a Mott insulator state as they would in bulk crystals when the system is half-filled. We calculate the fillings needed for obtaining insulating states in the framework of the slave-boson theory and in the limit of large Hubbard repulsion, U. We also suggest that these Mott states are unstable above some critical interlayer coupling or long-range Coulomb interaction.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Note and Comment

The Appam Case - On March 6 last the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in the appeals taken in the libel suits filed against the Appam and cargo in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Virginia, affirming the decree of. restitution entered by that court

Continuous symmetry of C60 fullerene and its derivatives

Conventionally, the Ih symmetry of fullerene C60 is accepted which is supported by numerous calculations. However, this conclusion results from the consideration of the molecule electron system, of its odd electrons in particular, in a close-shell approximation without taking the electron spin into account. Passing to the open-shell approximation has lead to both the energy and the symmetry lowering up to Ci. Seemingly contradicting to a high-symmetry pattern of experimental recording, particularly concerning the molecule electronic spectra, the finding is considered in the current paper from the continuous symmetry viewpoint. Exploiting both continuous symmetry measure and continuous symmetry content, was shown that formal Ci symmetry of the molecule is by 99.99% Ih. A similar continuous symmetry analysis of the fullerene monoderivatives gives a reasonable explanation of a large variety of their optical spectra patterns within the framework of the same C1 formal symmetry exhibiting a strong stability of the C60 skeleton.Comment: 11 pages. 5 figures. 6 table

A comparative analysis of European press coverage of children and the internet

This article reports a content analysis of press coverage of children and the internet in order to examine cross-cultural similarities and differences in the news values framing accounts of the benefits from and risks facing children online. By comparing media reporting in 14 European countries, the study found greater coverage of online risks than opportunities across Europe, which appears to be due to the high position of crime stories on the news agenda.. Thus readers, including parents, are exposed to media representations that often show the online world as being risky for children, which may affect perceptions of the prevalence of risk. However, there is national variation in terms of which risks receive more press attention, meaning that parents in different countries are potentially sensitised to different risks