A Jury of One’s Peers : Felon Jury Exclusion and Racial Inequality in Georgia Courts

African-Americans are overrepresented in felony convictions and, thus, more likely to be excluded from jury service. This study examines the potential impact of felon jury exclusion on the proportion of African-Americans that remain eligible for jury service. Results indicate that felon jury exclusion dramatically reduces the pool of eligible African-Americans statewide by nearly one-third. Furthermore, the level of exclusion for all groups is concentrated in areas with higher African-American populations. When limiting the analysis to African-Americans, however, counties with low African-American populations tend to have the highest levels of African-American exclusion. OLS regression models support the notion that the concentration of African-Americans at the county level is a significant factor in all three model specifications. The nature of this relationship, however, changes dramatically across the models

Unspeakable Suspicions: Challenging the Racist Consensual Encounter

[Excerpt] In recent years, law enforcement officials have honed a new technique for fighting the War on Drugs: the suspicionless police sweep of stations and vehicles involved in interstate mass transportation. Single officers or groups of officers approach unfortunate individuals in busses, trains, stations and airline terminals. A targeted traveller is requested to show identification and tickets, explain the purpose of his or her travels, and finally, at times, to consent to a luggage search. As long as a reasonable person would understand that he or she could refuse to cooperate, the encounter between the law-enforcement official and the traveller is deemed consensual, not subject to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment

Who Is In Charge, and Who Should Be? The Disciplinary Role of the Commander in Military Justice Systems

BackgroundStandard therapy for newly diagnosed glioblastoma is radiotherapy plus temozolomide. In this phase 3 study, we evaluated the effect of the addition of bevacizumab to radiotherapy-temozolomide for the treatment of newly diagnosed glioblastoma. MethodsWe randomly assigned patients with supratentorial glioblastoma to receive intravenous bevacizumab (10 mg per kilogram of body weight every 2 weeks) or placebo, plus radiotherapy (2 Gy 5 days a week; maximum, 60 Gy) and oral temozolomide (75 mg per square meter of body-surface area per day) for 6 weeks. After a 28-day treatment break, maintenance bevacizumab (10 mg per kilogram intravenously every 2 weeks) or placebo, plus temozolomide (150 to 200 mg per square meter per day for 5 days), was continued for six 4-week cycles, followed by bevacizumab monotherapy (15 mg per kilogram intravenously every 3 weeks) or placebo until the disease progressed or unacceptable toxic effects developed. The coprimary end points were investigator-assessed progression-free survival and overall survival. ResultsA total of 458 patients were assigned to the bevacizumab group, and 463 patients to the placebo group. The median progression-free survival was longer in the bevacizumab group than in the placebo group (10.6 months vs. 6.2 months; stratified hazard ratio for progression or death, 0.64; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.55 to 0.74; P<0.001). The benefit with respect to progression-free survival was observed across subgroups. Overall survival did not differ significantly between groups (stratified hazard ratio for death, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.76 to 1.02; P=0.10). The respective overall survival rates with bevacizumab and placebo were 72.4% and 66.3% at 1 year (P=0.049) and 33.9% and 30.1% at 2 years (P=0.24). Baseline health-related quality of life and performance status were maintained longer in the bevacizumab group, and the glucocorticoid requirement was lower. More patients in the bevacizumab group than in the placebo group had grade 3 or higher adverse events (66.8% vs. 51.3%) and grade 3 or higher adverse events often associated with bevacizumab (32.5% vs. 15.8%). ConclusionsThe addition of bevacizumab to radiotherapy-temozolomide did not improve survival in patients with glioblastoma. Improved progression-free survival and maintenance of baseline quality of life and performance status were observed with bevacizumab; however, the rate of adverse events was higher with bevacizumab than with placebo.

Food in the City: Community-Driven Agriculture across the United States

Urban Agriculture is an accepted practice in many cities and countries, and has attracted a broad cross-section of people across the United States to start growing food in their communities. In some cases, the motivation behind Urban Agriculture is clear, but throughout the history of Urban Agriculture in the United States there have been many reasons why urbanites have started growing food. Such reasons include an ideological battle against conventional agriculture, the need for food itself, the desire to recreate, and the urge to educate others. The motivation behind the practice varies from location to location with national trends shifting throughout history as communities struggled to understand what Urban Agriculture meant to them. Ultimately, however, the motivations of the Americans on the ground practicing Urban Agriculture are largely undocumented. Through a series of interviews with practitioners of Urban Agriculture across the United States, I have gathered data suggesting that the primary reasons why Americans are growing food in cities today are to have a career in a profession they enjoy and to educate others about the benefits they see in Urban Agriculture