In theory, a criminal's intricate planning shouldn't rule out an insanity defense, says clinical psychologist William Carroll, a former defense lawyer who teaches at John Marshall Law School in Chicago.
“A person can be extremely intelligent and also crazy as hell”, Carrol says. “That's hard for a jury to understand.”
Chris Slobogin, a law and psychiatry professor at the University of Florida, agrees. In the Unabomber case, however, “The planning didn't just span a day or two, or a week. It spanned a multi-year period. It would be very difficult to argue that all of this behavior was caused by psychosis.”
The Unabomber's seemingly political agenda also spells trouble for the defense. Mental illness can fuel political beliefs, but jurors who read the Unabomber manifesto will likely conclude that “while eccentric and perhaps dangerous, he is nonetheless rational,” Slobogin says.
Jurors reached that conclusion last year in the trial of John Salvi III, an anti-abortion extremist who killed two workers at a Boston clinic.
Salvi's lawyers described him as a severely ill man who believed he was battling an anti-Catholic conspiracy launched by the Mafia, the Freemasons and the Ku Klux Klan. A jury found him sane, however. He later killed himself in prison.
Jurors also distrust mental illness testimony at sentencing, Sundby says. But it can be more effective there because the legal standards are easier to meet.
At sentencing, jurors need only ask whether mental illness distorted the defendant's perceptions enough that he or she does not deserve to die, Sundby says. “It's more of a compassion issue.”
TEXT 22
Spatial Analysis of Crime Using GIS-Based Data: Weighted Spatial Adaptive Filtering and Chaotic Cellular Forecasting
With Applications to Street Level Drug Markets
Abstract
With the recent emphasis towards proactive Community Oriented Policing and the increase in the use of computerized information systems for data collection police departments are faced with two major problems: (1) how to mine the vast amounts of data produced by these systems, and (2) how to use this data to provide information that supports proactive law enforcement.
This dissertation makes a contribution in this area by providing the model specification and framework for such tools, a GIS-based data collection system, and a new spatio-temporal forecasting method – chaotic cellular forecasting (CCF) – for use by an early warning system for emerging drug markets.
Introduction
As police organizations automate their operations and implement more modern computer systems, taking advantage of advances in information technology such as open architecture database systems, enterprise wide computer applications and ever increasing microprocessor and network speeds, more and more information will become available to police officers at the click of a mouse button. Moreover, all of this information will be linked together from various sources and organized in ways which were previously unheard of. Police investigators will likely find this wealth of information a boon to their work, but crime analysts and police administrators may well find themselves faced with information overload.
At the same time that police departments are making increasing use of computer technology they are also undergoing a change in law enforcement philosophy. Evidence of this change can be seen in the fact that many police departments are implementing Community Oriented Policing (C.O.P.) in an effort to emphasize proactive rather than reactive law enforcement. While the concept of Community Oriented Policing is certainly not new (for a review of early C.O.P. initiatives see Trojanowicz, 1986) the way in which information is utilized in Community Oriented Policing has changed over the years. In many cities desktop personal computers have replaced the daily log for foot patrol officers and in some cities the time honored tradition of a notebook and pencil has given way to hand held, pen based mobile computers.
An abundance of tools and methodologies have been developed that support traditional reactive law enforcement. Practical examples include investigative tools such as linkage analysis, geographic offender profiling and modus operandi systems. Geographic information systems have also played a large role, both from a practical and a research perspective. Research examples include measuring the geographic displacement of drug offenders (Green, 1993), monitoring the effects of law enforcement strategies on nuisance bar activity (Cohen et al., 1993) and point pattern analysis of crime locations (Canter, 1993). Other examples of more general purpose crime mapping systems for law enforcement include the Drug Market Analysis Program (DMAP) effort undertaken in Jersey City, Hartford, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Kansas City (McEwen and Taxman, 1994; Maltz, 1993) and PA-LEGIS (Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Geographic Information System), an integrated GIS and police records management system developed for smaller police departments (Bookser, 1991).
There is no doubt that tools for reactive policing will always play an important role in law enforcement. However, proactive law enforcement will require an entirely new set of tools, the development of which has only just begun. Proactive problem solving by detectives, community oriented police officers and police officials not only requires access to up-to-date information on criminal activity, but perhaps more importantly the ability to anticipate emerging crime trends. This in turn requires the ability to mine the vast amounts of data produced on a daily basis by 911 and police record management systems, police hot line tips and citizen complaints for signs of impending flare-ups, geographic displacement or other unusual criminal activity. In other words, proactive law enforcement needs tools that can anticipate or provide early warning of criminal patterns so that they may be prevented.
This dissertation makes a contribution in this area by providing the model specification and framework, a GIS-based data collection system, and a new spatio-temporal forecasting method – chaotic cellular forecasting (CCF) – for use by an early warning system for emerging drug markets.
The second chapter focuses on the development of a geographic information system that provides the underlying data for the dissertation. This practical application of GIS to narcotics enforcement arose out of the Drug Market Analysis Program (DMAP) funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). A by-product of the DMAP program was a very accurate data set consisting of point (i.e., address) level data on illicit drug market activity and related crimes.
Chapter 3 is a study employing multiple regression techniques to analyze the effects of both traditional and ecological variables on illicit drug markets. The study was in part made possible due to the fact that DMAP includes high quality location data on ecological variables such as land use and the built environment.
Chapter 4 is an empirical study introducing weighted spatial adaptive filtering which provides evidence that spatial interaction, local context and spatially varying model parameters are important indicators of street level drug dealing.
The fifth chapter introduces chaotic cellular forecasting. CCF employs the findings of the previous chapters and combines chaos theory, artificial neural networks (ANN's) and grid cell aggregated GIS-based data to produce one-step-ahead forecasts of street level drug market activity. One of the underlying assumptions of CCF is that spatio-temporal patterns of criminal activity can be modeled as a chaotic system. Artificial neural networks, more specifically feedforward networks with backpropagation, are then used to estimate the forecasting model. Backpropagation models are uniquely qualified for this purpose because they are self adapting and are universal approximators (Hornik et al., 1989). Two versions of CCF, one using spatially constant weights (analogous to spatial regression using spatially constant parameters) and the other a hybrid model of spatially varying input to hidden unit weights and constant hidden to output units weights are tested. The results are compared to both a simple and a state-of-the art spatial regression model using spatially lagged variables and tested for forecast accuracy on a holdout data sample.
The sixth and final chapter provides a summary and outlines future work.
TEXT 23
Estate in English law
In 1925, several laws were passed in England in an attempt to simplify the system of holding and transferring land. These laws recognized two estates in land. An estate is a right to possess land for a defined period of time, and the two estates recognized are (i) "fee simple absolute in possession" and (ii) "term of years absolute." The first means that the landholder owns the land throughout his life unless he sells or gives it to someone else. Eventually, this land will pass to his heirs (people entitled to the property of someone after he dies: see previous chapter). The second is a right to hold land for a certain fixed period, after whichthe land returns to the holder of the estate "absolute in possession."
We often call the first estate a freehold and the second a leasehold, or lease. All land is ultimately held by a freeholder, but sometimes it is the freeholder who is using the land, and sometimes it is a leaseholder. In England a majority of people living in houses own the freehold, but people living in apartments usually own a lease. When they buy an apartment they will want to buy as long a lease as possible from the freeholder – for example, 99 years. Often the leaseholder (or lessee) has the right to sell his lease to someone else, but of course he can only sell the right to use the land for the number of years remaining on the lease. Until the lease ends, he has the right to possess the land exclusively: even the freeholder has no right to enter the land without the leaseholder's permission. However, the contract he signed with the freeholder will require him to fulfill certain obligations, such as paying rent (ground rent) and keeping buildings in a good condition. The obligations, or covenants, which the leaseholder and freeholder owe to each other can be very complicated. For example, they must decide who is to pay if expensive repairs need to be done. Even a 99 year lease could be ended (forfeited) if the lessee breaks an important agreement such as rent payment.
It seems likely that the leasehold system for owning an apartment will be changed in the near future. In other countries which inherited the English system of law, apartment owners usually hold a commonhold —a share in the freehold of the land on which the whole apartment building stands. This system is similar to the way apartments are owned in continental-law countries and enables an owner to sell his apartment without the worry that his lease is too short.
Legal interests
As well as these two estates, or ways of holding your land, English law since 1925 has recognized four legal interests over land held by someone else. The first is an easement, such as a neighbor's right to use a footpath over your land, or your right not to have buildings or trees on your land block light to his windows. The second is a rent-charge – someone's right to charge a landholder a periodical sum of money. The third is a legal mortgage – an interest in property given as a form of security to someone who has lent the landholder money. If the money is repaid the interest ends. However, if the landholder fails to pay his debt by a certain time, the money-lender, or mortgagee, may have the right to take the property from the borrower, or mortgagor. Mortgages are very important in land law because when most people buy an initial house or apartment they have to borrow a lot of money from a mortgagee such as a bank or a building society. The last legal interest is a right of entry. The right of a freeholder to enter a lessee's property if he fails to pay rent is an example of a right of entry.
Land transfer
Someone who buys land needs to know exactly what rights and obligations are attached to the land. Although it is possible to deal directly with the seller, most people employ a solicitor to handle the complicated business of land transfer, known as conveyancing. In fact, even after the simplifications of 1925, which reduced the system to two kinds of legal estate and four kinds of legal interest, there still exist many kinds of "equitable" interest (see previous chapter) which the buyer and seller need to know about. For example, even if the freehold you want to buy is registered in the name of only one person, you should make sure the spouse of the freeholder does not have the right to continue living in the property after it has been sold!
When investigating the rights attached to land, solicitors used to examine title deeds — documents recording transfers of the property over many years. In Britain there is now a land registry which makes investigation of title easier because it is a central register describing the land, the landholder, and third party rights. However, not all land in Britain has yet been recorded on the register, and there are some land rights which need not be recorded there. Even if land has been registered, the solicitor still has many things to check, such as possible plans of the local council to build noisy roads near the house. Any mistakes he makes could cost the buyer a lot of money. Conveyancing is one of the areas in which solicitors sometimes get sued by clients.
Short-term possession
Another important area of land law concerns types of possession for shorter and less secure terms than freeholds and leases – for example, where a person living in property pays money to a landlord every week in return for permission to live there. The landlord is usually the freeholder or the leaseholder of the property, but sometimes he himself is paying rent to someone else. Sometimes it is not easy to decide whether a tenancy is a lease or only a license. Generally, a licensee does not have as much security as a lessee. For example, if he fails to pay the rent, his landlord may be able to repossess the property more easily and more quickly than a freeholder can get his land back from a leaseholder. However, many legal systems have laws to protect such land-users. In Britain, for example, the Landlord and Tenant Act requires landlords to give certain periods of warning to tenants if they want to repossess their property, and it provides means for tenants to negotiate a reasonable period of time in which to pay rent arrears (over due rent). Under the 1988 Housing Act, there are Rent Tribunals which sometimes have the power to reduce rents which they consider too high. There are also special laws concerning tenants who rent land in order to run a business. Usually, however, there is greater protection for someone who rents land to live on.
TEXT 24
"Miranda" Rights and the Fifth Amendment
What are the "Miranda" Rights?
In1966, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the historic case of Miranda v. Arizona, declaring that whenever a person is taken into police custody, before being questioned he or she must be told of the Fifth Amendment right not to make any self-incriminating statements. As a result of Miranda, anyone in police custody must be told four things before being questioned:
1. You have the right to remain silent.
2. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
3. You have the right to an attorney.
4. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
What if the Police Fail to Advise Me of My Miranda Rights?
When police officers question a suspect in custody without first giving the Miranda warning, any statement or confession made is presumed to be involuntary, and cannot be used against the suspect in any criminal case. Any evidence discovered as a result of that statement or confession will likely also be thrown out of the case.
For example, suppose Dan is arrested and, without being read his Miranda rights, is questioned by police officers about a bank robbery. Unaware that he has the right to remain silent, Dan confesses to committing the robbery and tells the police that the money is buried in his backyard. Acting on this information, the police dig up the money. When Dan's attorney challenges the confession in court, the judge will likely find it unlawful. This means that, not only will the confession be thrown out of the case against Dan, but so will the money itself, because it was discovered solely as a result of the unlawful confession.
"Search and Seizure" and the Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects personal privacy, and every citizen's right to be free from unreasonable government intrusion into their persons, homes, businesses, and property, whether through police stops of citizens on the street, arrests, or searches of homes and businesses. Lawmakers and the courts have put in place legal safeguards to ensure that law enforcement officers interfere with individuals' Fourth Amendment rights only under limited circumstances, and through specific methods.
What Does the Fourth Amendment Protect?
In the criminal law realm, Fourth Amendment "search and seizure" protections extend to:
• A law enforcement officer's physical apprehension or "seizure" of a person, by way of a stop or arrest; and
• Police searches of places and items in which an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy — his or her person, clothing, purse, luggage, vehicle, house, apartment, hotel room, and place of business, to name a few examples.
The Fourth Amendment provides safeguards to individuals during searches and detentions, and prevents unlawfully seized items from being used as evidence in criminal cases. The degree of protection available in a particular case depends on the nature of the detention or arrest, the characteristics of the place searched, and the circumstances under which the search takes place.
When Does the Fourth Amendment Apply?
The legal standards derived from the Fourth Amendment provide constitutional protection to individuals in the following situations, among others:
• An individual is stopped for police questioning while walking down the street.
• An individual is pulled over for a minor traffic infraction, and the police officer searches the vehicle's trunk.
• An individual is arrested.
• Police officers enter an individual's house to place him or her under arrest.
• Police officers enter an individual's apartment to search for evidence of
crime.
• Police officers enter a corporation's place of business to search for evidence of crime.
• Police officers confiscate an individual's vehicle or personal property and place it under police control.
TEXT 25
Congress – What Is It?
The United States Congress differs from a parliament chiefly in the fact that it does not contain the executive. The President and his Cabinet are not members of the House, as the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are in England. The Congress cannot peremptorily ask a question of the President except in an impeachment proceeding; and if it refuses to pass an Administration bill, there is no "crisis". The President in that case does not resign; nor does he dissolve Congress and force a new election.
In the United States Government, the people are represented in one way by the Congress and in another by the President. Each has the right and the means to appeal directly to the people for support against the other, and they do. The effect is that the struggle between the Executive and Congress varies between open hostilities and armed truce, even when the President's party is in control of Congress. Another situation, that cannot occur in a parliament, arises when the people choose a President of one party and a Congress of another, putting the executive and the legislative branches automatically in opposition to each other.
The United States Congress is therefore more irresponsible than a parliament, for the member of the President's party can vote against an Administration proposal without voting to have the President resign. This lack of responsibility encourages demagogues in Congress to play for headlines, since the party in power does not feel that strict discipline is a matter of life and death.
One effect of the separation of powers is that the Senate is as important a body as the House. In other countries there is a tendency for the lower house, since it controls the executive, to assume all the power, letting the upper house live on as a debating society of elder statesmen.
The tradition of a two-chambered legislature is deeply rooted in American political life. The colonial governments had two chambers and so do all the States except Nebraska. But the principal reason that no one can conceive of any movement toward a one-chamber Congress is that the United States is still a Federal Union of large and small States.
The fact that all bills have to pass two different bodies does not cause delay in emergencies when the people are united in favor of following the President's leadership. But on ordinary matters in ordinary times, legislation is slow, hearings are duplicated, and an opposition has advantages over the proposition.
The Senate and the House of Representatives differ in their composition and attitude, even though the Constitution has been amended to shift the election of senators from the State legislatures to the plain voters. The senators average a few years older than the congressmen. Congressmen often move up into the Senate, but few ex-senators have ever run for the House. The senators are more distinguished by their office because there are only 100 of them while there are 435 congressmen. A seat in the Senate has a high publicity value which can be used for good or ill purposes.
TEXT 26
How to write a will
Full legal name:
Do not use any nicknames or abbreviations. The name must be your legal name, not your social name.
Social Security Number:
Although not mandatory, a social security number will help to positively identify the document as your Last Will and Testament.
City where you reside:
State where you reside:
Marital Status:
Spouse Name:
Enter your spouse's full legal name. Do not use nicknames or your spouse's social name. For example, use "Mary B. Doe" not "Mrs. John Doe".
Do you have any children?
Do you want to give specific items of your property or specific amounts of cash to any individual or organization?
You may give specific gifts, also called "specific bequests," of personal property, real property, and specific amounts of cash to people or organizations.
How many persons or organizations do you want to receive your residuary estate?
Your residuary estate is all the property left in your estate after you've made any specific gifts. You must name a residuary beneficiary for your estate.
Name of the person or organization you want to receive the residuary estate:
It is helpful to precede the name of a residuary beneficiary with a brief description of your relationship. [Example: my friend, Jack Smith]
How many alternate beneficiaries would you like to specify?
Your alternate choice will receive this portion of your residuary estate only if your named residuary beneficiary choice fails to survive you by 30 days.
