scholarly journals Rules for Establishing Causation in Opiate/Opioid Overdose Prosecutions — The Burrage Decision

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-90
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Gilson ◽  
Carole Rendon ◽  
Joseph Pinjuh

As the opiate/opioid crisis has worsened in the United States, one of the law enforcement responses has involved increased efforts to prosecute the individuals responsible for the distribution of illicit drugs that result in overdoses. When mixed intoxications occur, the controlling decision for prosecution is Burrage v. United States (2014), which provides guidance on the types of evidence required for establishment of causation. In many types of legal proceedings, forensic pathologists are called to provide expert testimony, although they may be unaware of the burden of proof that is required in a given case. This paper seeks to elaborate upon the burden of proof in drug overdose prosecutions with the guidance of Burrage and offer insight into the expectations and limitations involved in these cases.

Author(s):  
Jamie C. Osborne ◽  
L. Casey Chosewood

The United States is experiencing an evolving and worsening drug overdose epidemic. Although the rate of drug use among workers has remained relatively stable, the risk of overdose and death among drug users has not, as illicit drugs have increased in potency and lethality. The cumulative impacts of COVID-19 and the opioid crisis increase the likelihood of illness and death among workers with opioid use disorder. Workplaces represent a critical point of contact for people living in the United States who are struggling with or recovering from a substance use disorder, and employment is a vital source of recovery “capital.” The benefits of addressing substance use in the workplace, supporting treatment, and employing workers in recovery are evident. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has published research to inform policy and practice toward prevention efforts and has developed accessible resources and toolkits to support workers, employers, and workplaces in combatting the opioid overdose crisis and creating safer, healthier communities.


1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael F. Perl

In September 1989, President Bush outlined a comprehensive, multi-faceted drug control strategy with both national and international dimensions. The strategy focused on reducing both the demand and supply of illicit drugs. Treatment, prevention/education, research, law enforcement, and international efforts are major components of the strategy. An important goal of the strategy was to reduce the amount of illicit drugs illegally entering the United States by 15% within 2 years and by 60% within 10 years. The president refined the strategy and forwarded it to Congress on 25 January 1990 (US-ONDCP, 1990: 49-52, 120-121). The following year, in February 1991, policymakers modified goals to a 20% reduction by 1993 and a 65% reduction by the year 2001 (US-ONDCP, 1991: 15).


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Décary-Hétu ◽  
Vincent Mousseau ◽  
Sabrina Vidal

Cryptomarkets are online illicit marketplaces where drug dealers advertise the sale of illicit drugs. Anonymizing technologies such as the Tor network and virtual currencies are used to hide cryptomarket participants’ identity and to limit the ability of law enforcement agencies to make arrests. In this paper, our aim is to describe how herbal cannabis dealers and buyers in the United States have adapted to the online sale of herbal cannabis through cryptomarkets. To achieve this goal, we evaluate the size and scope of the American herbal cannabis market on cryptomarkets and compare it to other drug markets from other countries, evaluate the impact of cryptomarkets on offline sales of herbal cannabis, and evaluate the ties between the now licit herbal cannabis markets in some States and cryptomarkets. Our results suggest that only a small fraction of herbal cannabis dealers and drug users have transitioned to cryptomarkets. This can be explained by the need for technical skills to buy and sell herbal cannabis online and by the need to have access to computers that are not accessible to all. The slow rate of adoption may also be explained by the higher price of herbal cannabis relative to street prices. If cryptomarkets were to be adopted by a larger portion of the herbal cannabis market actors, our results suggest that wholesale and regional distributors who are not active on cryptomarkets would be the most affected market’s participants.


2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
MICHAEL E. DEUTSCH ◽  
ERICA THOMPSON

The case of Muhammad Salah, a Palestinian-American grocer and Chicago resident, is the longest-running terrorism case in the United States. He was brought to trial on terrorism-funding charges in October 2006 after a thirteen-year saga that began with his January 1993 arrest in Israel as the ““world commander of Hamas”” and that continued in the United States following his release from Israeli prison in late 1997. Though acquitted of all terrorism-related charges by a U.S. federal jury in Chicago in February 2007, Salah was convicted on a single count of obstruction of justice. In this exclusive report for JPS, Salah's lawyers recount the unfolding of this landmark and labyrinthine case, analyzing its legal underpinnings and implications. His prosecution served to advance new standards governing the admissibility of coerced confessions at trial and the use of secret evidence, while at the same time establishing new procedures for preventing the cross-examination of key witnesses and closing the courtroom to the press and public during crucial testimony. Even before his U.S. trial, his taped confession extracted under Shin Bet torture served as the linchpin of the U.S. government's investigation and prosecution of persons it suspected of providing material support for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. More broadly, the years covered by the case show the erosion of the rule of law in the United States, as well as the melding of the discourses, strategies, tactics, and aims of U.S. and Israeli law enforcement and intelligence bodies long before the post-9/11 launch of the ““global war on terror.”” Part I of this two-part account lays the ground for the 2006––7 Chicago trial, covering the period of Salah's arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment in Israel and the investigations and legal proceedings against him upon his return. Part II will focus on the crafting of the case by the Justice Department under Pres. George W. Bush and the trial itself.


Author(s):  
Scott Fulmer ◽  
Shruti Jain ◽  
David Kriebel

The opioid epidemic has had disproportionate effects across various sectors of the population, differentially impacting various occupations. Commercial fishing has among the highest rates of occupational fatalities in the United States. This study used death certificate data from two Massachusetts fishing ports to calculate proportionate mortality ratios of fatal opioid overdose as a cause of death in commercial fishing. Statistically significant proportionate mortality ratios revealed that commercial fishermen were greater than four times more likely to die from opioid poisoning than nonfishermen living in the same fishing ports. These important quantitative findings suggest opioid overdoses, and deaths to diseases of despair in general, deserve further study in prevention, particularly among those employed in commercial fishing.


1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
George J. Annas

In an extraordinary and highly controversial 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court decided on June 30, 1980, that the United States Constitution does not require either the federal government or the individual states to fund medically necessary abortions for poor women who qualify for Medicaid.At issue in this case is the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment. The applicable 1980 version provides:|N]one of the funds provided by this joint resolution shall be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term; or except for such medical procedures necessary for the victims of rape or incest when such rape or incest has been reported promptly to a law enforcement agency or public health service, (emphasis supplied)


2021 ◽  
pp. 155545892199751
Author(s):  
Mehtap Akay ◽  
Reva Jaffe-Walter

This article details how a newly arrived Turkish refugee student navigates schooling in the United States. It highlights the trauma a purged Turkish families experience in their home country and their challenges as newcomers unfamiliar with their new country’s dominant culture, language, and education system. The case narrative provides insight into how children of Turkish political refugees are often overlooked in the context of U.S. schools, where teachers lack adequate training and supports. By illuminating one refugee family’s experiences in U.S. schools, the case calls for leaders to develop holistic supports and teacher education focused on the needs of refugee students.


Aschkenas ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Schlör

AbstractThe idea to create and stage a play called »Heimat im Koffer« – »A home in the suitcase« – emerged, I presume, in Vienna shortly before Austria became part of National Socialist Germany in 1938: the plot involved the magical translocation of a typical Viennese coffeehouse, with all its inhabitants and with the songs they sang, to New York; their confrontation with American everyday life and musical traditions would create the humorous situations the authors hoped for. Since 1933, Robert Gilbert (Robert David Winterfeld, 1899–1978), the son of a famous Jewish musician and himself a most successful writer of popular music for film and operetta in Weimar Germany, found himself in exile in Vienna where he cooperated with the journalist Rudolf Weys (1898–1978) and the piano artist Hermann Leopoldi (1888–1959). Whereas Gilbert and Leopoldi emigrated to the United States and became a part of the German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish emigré community of New York – summarizing their experience in a song about the difficulty to acquire the new language, »Da wär’s halt gut, wenn man Englisch könnt« (1943) – Weys survived the war years in Vienna. After 1945, Gilbert and Weys renewed their contact and discussed – in letters kept today within the collection of the Viennese Rathausbibliothek – the possibility to finally put »Heimat im Koffer« on stage. The experiences of exile, it turned out, proved to be too strong, and maybe too serious, for the harmless play to be realized, but the letters do give a fascinating insight into everyday-life during emigration, including the need to learn English properly, and into the impossibility to reconnect to the former life and art.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amada Armenta

Deporting “criminal aliens” has become the highest priority in American immigration enforcement. Today, most deportations are achieved through the “crimmigration” system, a term that describes the convergence of the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. Emerging research argues that U.S. immigration enforcement is a “racial project” that subordinates and racializes Latino residents in the United States. This article examines the role of local law enforcement agencies in the racialization process by focusing on the techniques and logics that drive law enforcement practices across two agencies, I argue that local law enforcement agents racialize Latinos by punishing illegality through their daily, and sometimes mundane, practices. Investigatory traffic stops put Latinos at disproportionate risk of arrest and citation, and processing at the local jail subjects unauthorized immigrants to deportation. Although a variety of local actors sustain the deportation system, most do not see themselves as active participants in immigrant removal and they explain their behavior through a colorblind ideology. This colorblind ideology obscures and naturalizes how organizational practices and laws converge to systematically criminalize and punish Latinos in the United States.


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