Standards for Accepting Guilty Pleas to Misdemeanor Charges

The guilty plea-not the trial-is the most common manner of disposing of criminal cases in America. It has been estimated that 90 percent of all convictions and 95 percent of misdemeanor convictions are the result of guilty pleas. Various reasons have been advanced to explain this heavy reliance on the guilty plea. For example, it avoids the drain on judicial resources that would occur if all cases had to be tried. In addition, it eliminates the risks and uncertainties of trials and permits flexibility in sentencing. Because of the prevalence of guilty pleas, there must be procedural safeguards to insure that defendants are treated fairly. It has long been established that, in order to be valid, a guilty plea must be entered voluntarily and understandingly. Thus, the Supreme Court has held that a guilty plea is invalid if it is entered as the result of threats, intimidation, or other forms of coercion or as a result of ignorance or misapprehension. In Boykin v. Alabama, there were no allegations that the defendant\u27s guilty plea resulted from misapprehension or any form of coercion, but the Supreme Court struck down the plea involved because the record failed to show affirmatively that it was voluntarily and understandingly entered. The Court held that it could not presume from a silent record that a guilty plea was entered voluntarily and knowingly. It emphasized that the trial judge must employ the utmost solicitude in canvassing the matter with the accused to make sure he has a full understanding of what the plea connotes and of its consequence[s]. This requirement is intended to provide an additional procedural safeguard for the accused and an adequate record for appellate review. The defendant in Boykin pleaded guilty to a serious felony and was sentenced to death. This article will examine the constitutional and policy considerations which suggest the application of Boykin to misdemeanors and will consider whether the procedures developed to implement the Boykin principle in felony cases should likewise be followed in misdemeanors

Bellum civile, bellum externum. Ambiwalencja obrazów wojny w twórczości Horacego

Bellum civile, bellum externum. Ambivalence of war images in Horace’s works The article aims at illustrating and explaining the ambivalence of images of just, external war (bellum externum) and civil, fratricidal war (bellum civile) in relation to the ancient literary theory and criticism, the phenomenon of political and cultural ‟patronage” and the political events of Augustan period. By analyzing the odes II 7 and III 2, epode 9 and ode I 37 the author argues that Horace’s initial litterary concept of presentation of civil and external war conventions as fas/nefas changes under the patronage. However, the poet himself, trying to preserve the poetic autonomy and meet the requirements of the ancient literary theory and criticism includes a new political and social situation in the sphere of his work. Key words: Horace; criticism; war; patronage; autonomy

The Authorial Subject as a Metapoetic Figure in Ode I 9, Vides ut alta, and Ode II 19, Bacchum in remotis

This paper analyses the relation between the authorial and textual subject of Ode I 9, Vides ut alta, and Ode II 19, Bacchum in remotis, as a means of transition from a figurative represented world to an author’s experience of the creative process, understood as Horace’s attempt to capture the creator’s natural need to transform this key experience into an act of poetic communication. As a starting point for analysis, the construction of the subject-bard (vates) and the topics of poetic frenzy (ingenium, insania, mania) shaping the poet’s image as a medium between the divine sphere of inspiration and the poetic communication turned towards the sender were adopted

Seeking Membranes: Positive-Strand RNA Virus Replication Complexes

How much do we really understand about how +RNA viruses usurp and transform the intracellular architecture of host cells when they replicate

SuperCLEM: An accessible correlative light and electron microscopy approach for investigation of neurons and glia in vitro

The rapid evolution of super-resolution light microscopy has narrowed the gap between light and electron microscopy, allowing the imaging of molecules and cellular structures at high resolution within their normal cellular and tissue context. Multimodal imaging approaches such as correlative light electron microscopy (CLEM) combine these techniques to create a tool with unique imaging capacity. However, these approaches are typically reserved for specialists, and their application to the analysis of neural tissue is challenging. Here we present SuperCLEM, a relatively simple approach that combines super-resolution fluorescence light microscopy (FLM), 3D electron microscopy (3D-EM) and rendering into 3D models. We demonstrate our workflow using neuron-glia cultures from which we first acquire high-resolution fluorescent light images of myelinated axons. After resin embedding and re-identification of the region of interest, serially aligned EM sections are acquired and imaged using a serial block face scanning electron microscope (SBF-SEM). The FLM and 3D-EM data sets are then combined to render 3D models of the myelinated axons. Thus, the SuperCLEM imaging pipeline is a useful new tool for researchers pursuing similar questions in neuronal, as well as other complex tissue culture systems

Host Lipids in Positive-Strand RNA Virus Genome Replication

Membrane association is a hallmark of the genome replication of positive-strand RNA viruses [(+)RNA viruses]. All well-studied (+)RNA viruses remodel host membranes and lipid metabolism through orchestrated virus-host interactions to create a suitable microenvironment to survive and thrive in host cells. Recent research has shown that host lipids, as major components of cellular membranes, play key roles in the replication of multiple (+)RNA viruses. This review focuses on how (+)RNA viruses manipulate host lipid synthesis and metabolism to facilitate their genomic RNA replication, and how interference with the cellular lipid metabolism affects viral replication

The Transformation of Enterovirus Replication Structures: a Three-Dimensional Study of Single- and Double-Membrane Compartments

All positive-strand RNA viruses induce membrane structures in their host cells which are thought to serve as suitable microenvironments for viral RNA synthesis. The structures induced by enteroviruses, which are members of the family Picornaviridae, have so far been described as either single- or double-membrane vesicles (DMVs). Aside from the number of delimiting membranes, their exact architecture has also remained elusive due to the limitations of conventional electron microscopy. In this study, we used electron tomography (ET) to solve the three-dimensional (3-D) ultrastructure of these compartments. At different time points postinfection, coxsackievirus B3-infected cells were high-pressure frozen and freeze-substituted for ET analysis. The tomograms showed that during the exponential phase of viral RNA synthesis, closed smooth single-membrane tubules constituted the predominant virus-induced membrane structure, with a minor proportion of DMVs that were either closed or connected to the cytosol in a vase-like configuration. As infection progressed, the DMV number steadily increased, while the tubular single-membrane structures gradually disappeared. Late in infection, complex multilamellar structures, previously unreported, became apparent in the cytoplasm. Serial tomography disclosed that their basic unit is a DMV, which is enwrapped by one or multiple cisternae. ET also revealed striking intermediate structures that strongly support the conversion of single-membrane tubules into double-membrane and multilamellar structures by a process of membrane apposition, enwrapping, and fusion. Collectively, our work unravels the sequential appearance of distinct enterovirus-induced replication structures, elucidates their detailed 3-D architecture, and provides the basis for a model for their transformation during the course of infection

New insights on the role of paired membrane structures in coronavirus replication

The replication of coronaviruses, as in other positive-strand RNA viruses, is closely tied to the formation of membrane-bound replicative organelles inside infected cells. The proteins responsible for rearranging cellular membranes to form the organelles are conserved not just among the Coronaviridae family members, but across the order Nidovirales. Taken together, these observations suggest that the coronavirus replicative organelle plays an important role in viral replication, perhaps facilitating the production or protection of viral RNA. However, the exact nature of this role, and the specific contexts under which it is important have not been fully elucidated. Here, we collect and interpret the recent experimental evidence about the role and importance of membrane-bound organelles in coronavirus replication