County Court Research Articles

Neme priče: mikrozgodovinski pogled na samomor v sodnih spisih prve polovice 20. stoletja

Based on the archival materials from the Celje and Maribor District Courts (Kreisgerichte) and the specific cases from the Trbovlje County Court (Bezirksgericht), referring to the areas with the highest suicide rates in the Drava Banate, this article examines suicide in the first half of the 20th century. Based on individual cases from judicial practice, as well as newspaper reports, the article sheds light on the social, economic and regional conditions in the considered areas in the first half of the 20th century, as well as the position of women in society and the prevalence of family and sexual violence. At the time when the increasing suicide rates were attributed to the aftermath of World War I, the effects of the economic crisis, and alcoholism, the article analyses the presence and gradual dominance of psychological and psychiatric discourse in determining the causes of individual suicides. By analysing the individual cases, the author presents the attitude towards suicide in rural areas – the shame and stigma still felt by the family members when a relative of theirs commits suicide. The author analyses cases where either the suicide could not be identified or when the corps of the deceased was not found, as well as cases of suicide due to fear and/or shame due to crimes committed. Furthermore, the article focuses on the phenomenon of female suicide and, in this context, on the examples of murder-suicide and the role of women in them, analyses the contemporaneous media discourse, and describes the course of the investigations in the cases where it was not clear whether the death had resulted from suicide or murder.

Himnuszperek a két háború közötti Csehszlovákiában Adalék a szlovákiai magyarok és a csehszlovák állam viszonyához

In the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic, Slovakia was an ethnically mixed territory, the scene of the meeting of Czechoslovak, Slovak, and Hungarian nation-building, among other things. From this point of view, the use of different national symbols, including national anthems, was a sensitive and much debated issue. This study attempts to outline the conflicts that the issue of national anthems had provoked between the state and its citizens, based on the archival records of county courts in Slovakia. The main focus of the paper is on the conflicts between the Czechoslovak state and the Hungarian population in Slovakia over the Hungarian national anthem. Based primarily on the county courts of the period and news reports in the contemporary press, the paper describes the court cases over the anthem and their outcomes. In doing so, it shows that the First Czechoslovak Republic, which was considered a liberal democracy, did not have a liberal attitude towards the use of symbols of national minorities at all.

Unleashing the anticipatory reasonable adjustment duty: University of Bristol v Abrahart (EHRC intervening) [2024] EWHC 299 (KB)

On 14 February 2024, the High Court upheld the decision of the Bristol County Court in University of Bristol v Dr Robert Abrahart. Ms Abrahart, a physics undergraduate, took her own life in April 2018, the morning before she was meant to deliver an oral presentation. The claim brought by Ms Abrahart’s father was that in failing to remove or adjust the requirement for oral assessments, the University had discriminated against her on the basis of her disability. The High Court upheld the discrimination claims under the Equality Act 2010 while dismissing the claim in negligence on the basis that the University did not owe Ms Abrahart a common law duty of care. This note discusses the contrasting moves made by the High Court in, on the one hand, lowering the bar for finding a breach of the anticipatory reasonable adjustment duty, and on the other hand, raising the bar for finding an assessment method to be a ‘competence standard’ set by universities. Although arising in relation to the very specific facts of this case, the implications of the ruling in Abrahart are far reaching.

Coding Evictions: St Joseph County Court Watch Eviction Program

Coding Evictions: St Joseph County Court Watch Eviction Program

Українське селянство 19 ст. у матеріалах повітового суду: мікроісторичний вимір у контексті повсякдення

The object of the article is to systematically highlight the materials of the court archive of one of the largest districts of Kyiv province, namely Uman district, in particular the court cases in which peasants were involved. These materials complement the concept of everyday Ukrainian peasantry in the 19th century. The research methodology is based on the use of general scientific principles of historicism, objectivity and a systematic approach in the analysis of historical sources, which are used in this article. Such special historical methods as descriptive, problem-chronological, historical-systemic and heuristic ones have proven to be effective. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time the materials of the judicial and investigative practice of Uman County Court were used to highlight such an aspect of everyday Ukrainian peasantry as crimes and punishments. Chronological and thematic systematization of court cases in which peasants were involved showed a quantitative superiority of cases about abuse of peasants, peculiar forms of peasant protest in the form of escapes from serf owners and deviant acts in the pre-reform years. Dissatisfaction with the agrarian reform of 1861 created the basis for the deviant behavior of peasants in the everyday life of the post-reform years. Conclusions. During the functioning of Uman County Court (1800-1872), 1,817 cases were postponed in its archive, 269 of which are the materials of court proceedings on the claims of peasants or their prosecution. Most of the court cases date back to the pre-reform years and contain evidence of social tension in the villages. But the agrarian reform of 1861, despite its positive aspects, did not eliminate the reasons for such tension even in the post-reform era. In the everyday life of the peasantry of the first half of the 19th century, there was abuse of landowners, housekeepers and estate managers, which served as a reason for peasants to run away, commit suicide, commit crimes, and deviant behavior in everyday life. The materials of the district court’s judicial and investigative practice show that wealthy peasants appealed to the court regarding the purchase of land plots. The abolition of serfdom and the gaining of personal freedom by the peasants did not relieve social tension, and in the everyday life of the peasantry, illegal actions took place as a manifestation of despair, rudeness and violence.

Courtroom workgroup dynamics and implementation of Three Strikes reform

AbstractIn 2012, California's voters passed a ballot initiative that scaled back the state's “Three Strikes” sentencing law and permitted certain individuals who were serving 25‐to‐life prison terms to petition for resentencing and potentially release. Using analysis of original qualitative interview data supplemented with court administrative records, this study examines how characteristics of courtroom workgroup members; their intergroup dynamics; political, professional, and administrative considerations; and allocated resources were perceived by court officials to facilitate or impede the implementation of this reform in county courts. Availability of staff and budget was associated with a higher proportion of completed case dispositions in the first 2 years of implementation, but resources were not the only factor associated with timely case processing. Courtroom actors' seniority, experience, and professional security facilitated agreement on processes, schedules, and other details. Small, stable, close‐knit groups established routine procedures and developed expertise more quickly, but could not always avoid bottlenecks or delays. Less stable workgroups had higher rates of denial of petitions for resentencing. Positions toward Proposition 36 shaped by political, professional, or other priorities were perceived to influence some elected DAs' positions and line prosecutors' behavior, manifesting in cooperation, opposition, or mixed messages.

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) as a Digital Biomarker of Cognitive Decline in Older Adults (P6-6.003)

<h3>Objective:</h3> The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility and validate the novel technology-based platform, known as IADLSys, for home-based remote monitoring of IADL. <h3>Background:</h3> Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, entails cognitive and functional decline with age. An assessment of instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) is essential for the diagnosis and staging of dementia. However, the current assessment of IADLs is subjective and cannot be conducted remotely. <h3>Design/Methods:</h3> IADLSys consists of three major components: (1) wireless physical tags (pTAG) attached to objects of interest, (2) a pendant–sensor to monitor physical activities and detect interaction with pTAGs, and (3) an interactive tablet as a gateway to transfer data to a secured cloud. If a pTAG is activated near the pendant and provokes accelerations, the IADL interaction data is recorded via Bluetooth on the pendant sensor. To demonstrate the feasibility of the IADLSys, four sub-studies were conducted: (1) proximity detection test, (2) sensitivity and specificity for detection accuracy, (3) acceptability for the IADLSys, and (4) case report regarding the severity of cognitive impairment in representative two cases. <h3>Results:</h3> IADLSys data were successfully collected under 4.57 m, and the accuracy of IADL detection showed 83.3 to 100.0% in an indoor environment. The acceptability level exhibited agree to strongly agree on the convenience, ease to use, and privacy in five older adults with cognitive impairment. Exploratory tests in two cases with severe and mild cognitive impairment, respectively, revealed that a case with severe cognitive impairment either overestimated or underestimated the frequency of performed IADLs, whereas self-reporting and objective IADL were comparable for the case with mild cognitive impairment. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> The smart-home concept to remotely monitor IADL may assist in providing personalized support to people with cognitive impairment, while tracking the decline in both physical and cognitive function. <b>Disclosure:</b> Dr. Lee has nothing to disclose. Dr. Mishra has received personal compensation for serving as an employee of Biosensics. Dr. York has received personal compensation in the range of $0-$499 for serving on a Scientific Advisory or Data Safety Monitoring board for RAD-PD. The institution of Dr. York has received research support from Michael J. Fox Foundation. The institution of Dr. York has received research support from NIH. The institution of Dr. York has received research support from Takeda. Mark Kunik has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as an Expert Witness for County probate courts and attorneys. The institution of Mark Kunik has received research support from VA. The institution of Mark Kunik has received research support from NIH. Mr. Barchard has received personal compensation for serving as an employee of BioSensics, LLC. Dr. Vaziri has received personal compensation for serving as an employee of Biosensics. Prof. Najafi has received personal compensation in the range of $100,000-$499,999 for serving as a Consultant for BioSensics. Prof. Najafi has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for Mölnlycke Health Care . Prof. Najafi has received intellectual property interests from a discovery or technology relating to health care. Prof. Najafi has received intellectual property interests from a discovery or technology relating to health care. Prof. Najafi has received intellectual property interests from a discovery or technology relating to health care.

Differences in accounts and the ‘lying’ complainant: A qualitative study of rape trials from Victoria, Australia

It is now well recognised that victims of sexual offences may recount events differently at different times and to different audiences and that variations, gaps or ‘inconsistencies’ are not necessarily indicative of lying or unreliability. Incorporating this knowledge into the criminal trial now forms part of the wider reform agenda in a number of jurisdictions, including via recommended jury directions. This is now expressly reflected in provisions like s 54D of the Jury Directions Act 2015 (Vic) – introduced in 2017 – which provides for an educative direction on how the jury should (and should not) consider differences in the complainant's account. Drawing on rare access to sexual offence trial transcripts, this article reports on the findings of an analysis of 33 rape trials finalised in the County Court of Victoria between 2013 and 2020. We found that complainants were still regularly cross-examined, and the quality of their evidence challenged, on the basis of differences in their accounts. We found little evidence that the availability of a jury direction has shifted the defence practice of evoking the ‘lying complainant’ by pointing to ‘inconsistences’ in their evidence.

The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 by Kristin A. Olbertson

Reviewed by: The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 by Kristin A. Olbertson Anne Lombard The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776. By Kristin A. Olbertson. Studies in Legal History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 337 pages. Cloth, ebook. Since at least the 1990s, historians have linked the development of gentry class consciousness in the eighteenth-century Anglo-American colonies with a cultural ideal of genteel refinement that had developed earlier in England.1 Most men with property and power in the colonies lacked the genteel or aristocratic birth that had anchored upper-class status in England a century earlier. Instead, elite colonial men based their claims to gentry status on their adoption of upper-class British ideals of behavior, education, and speech. The boundaries between "polite" colonial gentlemen and the "vulgar" (2) lower sorts came to be marked largely by language and culture. In general, historians have treated gentility in eighteenth-century British America as the expression of a particular upper-class culture. Members of the political and social elite acted like gentlemen, presumably impressing one another with their dignity and authority. But what happened when people outside of the elite scoffed or thumbed their noses at the new ideals of politeness? Kristin A. Olbertson, in this deeply researched, provocative, and often brilliant book, The Dreadful Word, argues that in eighteenth-century Massachusetts, genteel codes of behavior were not merely informal norms but were imposed through the law on those who refused to defer to the polite elite. Specifically, politeness was enforced and enacted through the regulation of "impolite" (2) speech and the prosecution of speech crimes such as swearing, cursing, contempt of authority, defamation, and lying. Speech crime prosecutions were not new in the eighteenth-century. The Puritans who first settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 made vigorous efforts to regulate ungodly speech and prosecute behavior that was by then tolerated in the English legal system. Criminal prosecutions for swearing, cursing, railing (insulting or mocking someone), singing, making noise in public, lying, and defaming were ubiquitous in the seventeenth century. But scholars have long assumed that after Massachusetts agreed to adhere to the English common law under the Charter of Massachusetts Bay in 1691—the Second Charter—its courts became less concerned with victimless morals offenses and more concerned with crimes of property.2 With [End Page 413] this legal change, scholars have assumed that prosecutions for speech crimes grew rare. In fact, Olbertson shows, speech crime prosecutions remained surprisingly common in Massachusetts from 1691 until the beginning of the American Revolution. In a comprehensive analysis of all surviving records from 1690 to 1776 from the county courts of General Sessions—which met quarterly to hear low-level criminal cases—in addition to justice of the peace records, she has found more than 1,600 cases involving criminal prosecutions for speech crimes. Many of these prosecutions were brought under statutes enacted after 1691 that prohibited swearing, cursing, blaspheming, railing, singing in taverns, lying and defamation, perjury, and spreading false news. Others appear to have been prosecuted under the English common law, as it was understood in Massachusetts. In either case, speech crimes continued to be a significant concern for Massachusetts law long after 1691. For Olbertson, these cases provide a window to observe how the law worked to establish genteel codes of politeness and shore up the authority of the colonial gentry. Following Rhys Isaac, Olbertson argues that courts were public, performative spaces that tutored spectators about proper behavior and demonstrated the difference between virtuous authority and uncivil disruption.3 Local law enforcement in early America was highly participatory; low-level criminal prosecutions were often initiated by individual community members and carried out by justices of the peace and judges who had little or no formal legal training. As a result, proceedings in the lower courts provided a public arena for average colonial Americans to observe and participate in debates about what the law should be, who was entitled to its protections, and who deserved its punishment. Olbertson employs the evidence from these court records in intriguing ways. First, she uses language from grand jury...

Female Hucksters and Produce Markets in the Great Lakes Region, 1830s–1890s

Female Hucksters and Produce Markets in the Great Lakes Region, 1830s–1890s Debra A. Reid (bio) Mary Judge had seen a bit of the world by the time she became a vendor at Detroit's City Hall Market. She remained a market fixture until her death. For over thirty years, newspaper reporters linked her, more than any other individual, with one cause célèbre, the city's public market. Judge catered to journalists, no doubt, but her entire cohort of female growers and hucksters found themselves in the news often. The media did not recognize them for bringing food to market, daily, between April and November. Instead, journalists often linked market women to the problems that the city hoped to solve if it closed the market. Vendors' wagons clogged downtown streets and created a public hazard, while their boisterous tactics and perceived unladylike behavior allegedly bordered on abuse. The media went even further by stressing the private challenges that individual women faced as evidence of the familial and social risks that resulted when women operated their businesses outside the bounds of patriarchy. This perpetuated the argument that the only good woman was a dutiful wife or ward working selflessly for a family's economic solvency. Judge's market story fits patterns well-documented in women's history. She became part of a sixty-year-old formal economy when she opened her stand in 1863. Yet, she selectively complied with regulations or outright defied them as need arose. Serena Zabin has documented comparable tactics among "poor white women" in colonial cities, women that she describes as "the linchpins" of informal economies. These women conducted business at a time when few women operated businesses outside the home, and most kept house and tended families under patriarchal authority. These informal economies continued into the early national period. Zabin argues, however, that informal trade and the poor White women who conducted it became [End Page 51] increasingly marginalized as common law perpetuated White male authority over commerce, earnings, real and personal property, and over the welfare of White men's wives, families, and wards.1 In Detroit, males authorized, regulated, administered, and managed the public market from its beginning. The first authorization coincided with Detroit's incorporation as part of the Old Northwest Territory in 1802. Then, city trustees established a market at the Detroit River and authorized appointment of a clerk to manage it. Little detail about this market exists, but in 1816, trustees approved construction of a market house in the center of Woodward Avenue below Jefferson Avenue (on the Detroit River side), financed with tax revenue. The markets in St. Louis, also a French-influenced midwestern city, followed a similar pattern with a market in the center of a wide avenue. Male clerks appointed by an elected common council administered the market.3 Growers, hucksters, and customers alike reflected Detroit's multi-ethnic population, with Indigenous, French, British, and Black and White Americans often crossing the fluid border between Detroit and Windsor, Canada. Antiquarian Silas Farmer romanticized this as he described the "black-eyed, olive-skinned maidens … from the Canada shore" who brought "garden-sauce and greens" to the earliest markets in little carts pulled by French ponies. In contrast, a newspaper account indicated that little demand for garden produce existed. Instead, many residents raised what they needed, and elderly men hauled surplus to the city markets in wheelbarrows. Only a few stands operated regularly, and they sold "celery, beets, lettuce, and similar vegetables, poultry and the like."4 Each ethnic group brought different perceptions of female status and authority to market operations, but the legal status of the women at the market resulted from a transfer of English common-law procedures to the new midwestern context. Elizabeth Brown has concluded that justices in the Wayne County court of Michigan Territory did not improvise, nor did they deviate from precedent. Instead, they followed English common-law procedures, as had justices in the eastern seaboard states. Changing situations prompted additional analyses, however, especially in the case of women, commerce, and property law. Justices cited two books in their decisions addressing the legal status of married women (femme covert) and single women...

Promene u Engleskoj poroti u XIX i XX veku

The present paper deals with the short history of the English jury in the modern age. The main goal of the author is completing a historical research and finding the most important features concerning legal institutions of the Anglo-Saxon type of lay jurisdiction in England and Ireland. The historical perspective gives a chance to examine the institutions of the jury as a court of citizens integrated into the jurisdiction of the state for a brief period of time. The author takes the view in several periods from the early 19th century up to the end of the 20th century. It is not the procedure but the organisational rules which are under discussion here with special attention to the conditions which determined the role of the jury as a part of county courts and sessions as well as the central tribunals in London. The literature was collected in the British Library during research intervals to have the opportunity to work from special sources not cited by Central-European scholars yet.

Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts by Jeff Forret

Reviewed by: Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts by Jeff Forret Jonathan Daniel Wells (bio) Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts. Jeff Forret. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-2208493031. 482 pp., cloth, $29.95. Before 1850, in the putative land of liberty, several slave-trading firms operated with abandon in the nation’s capital. Among these nefarious businesses, William H. Williams’ Yellow House was one of the most profitable and the best known, a preeminent capitalist enterprise with tentacles reaching far across the slave South. Untold numbers of Black captives were bought and sold, transactions that would likely mean forced transportation to the newly opened and fertile fields of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, where once Native lands would be converted into cotton and sugarcane fields to clothe and feed consumers in rapidly globalizing markets. In this highly detailed, meticulously researched, and engagingly written study, historian Jeff Forret recounts the shady dealings and shrouded lives of the slaver Williams and the twenty-one men and six women who would become the prime figures in a highly interesting series of antebellum court cases that would endure into the Civil War. The controversy launched in 1840 when the enslaved men and women were “convicted”—without due process, of course, and via ad hoc county courts of oyer and terminer—of serious felonies, such as murder and arson. Sentenced to be executed, the enslaved had their lives spared by the Virginia governor, who ordered them to be sold outside of the United States. Upon purchasing the enslaved convicts, Williams promised to sell them in Texas, which was yet to become a part of the Union. The problem, however, was that Williams’ reputation for underhandedness meant that Virginia officials, including Alexandria mayor Bernard Hooe, remained suspicious that he would renege on his promise and sell them in New Orleans instead. Hooe kept a wary eye on Williams’ movements, and when the latter loaded his human cargo onto the Uncas, Virginia officials sent word to counterparts in Mobile and New Orleans that Williams might dock in their ports. [End Page 426] Thanks to such forewarnings, when Williams landed first in Mobile and then in New Orleans, he drifted into communities on high alert, as newspaper notices and a flurry of government communications inflamed public opinion about the approaching ship. The communities, of course, were neither concerned about the fate of the human captives nor alarmed by the injustice of their so-called convictions. No Southern city wanted to be the recipient of potentially dangerous, troublemaking slaves. In fact, in 1817 Louisiana had passed a law prohibiting the importation of enslaved convicts. The problem, as Forret documents in rich and enlightening prose, was that any such persons were by the same law to be sold within the state, thereby undoing the law’s purpose in the first place! Arrested under the contradictory 1817 law in November 1840, Williams and his brother Thomas spent the next two decades in and out of jail as first the Louisiana courts and then the US Supreme Court tried to make sense of state law, Williams’ intentions, and the internecine battles of the domestic slave trade. Forret documents these cases in comprehensive chapters that reveal every nuance of discussion and controversy, but he accomplishes this exhaustive retelling with lively and passionate style. The plight of those arrested as illegally imported enslaved convicts is more obscured, but Forret reveals the agency and individuality of those who had sparked the interstate wrangling. Since it would be foolish to abide by the 1817 law’s contradictory strictures, the men and women were put to labor on public works, foreshadowing the ruthless chain gangs of the New South. Unsurprisingly, Louisiana officials proved insouciant overseers, and by 1843 at least some of the enslaved convicts had died. This study deserves a wide audience, not the least because it reveals the endlessly complicated consequences of holding human beings as property. Williams more than learned this lesson, but he nonetheless fared far better than the enslaved convicts he may or may not have intended to sell in New Orleans. Thanks to the Compromise of 1850...

Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South by Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.

Reviewed by: Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South by Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. Scarlet Jernigan Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South. By Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. [xii], 363. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-6439-2; cloth, $95.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6438-5.) In Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. expands on his book North Carolina's Free People of [End Page 772] Color, 1715–1885 (Baton Rouge, 2020) to provide a needed overview of the "collective lives of free people of color" in the South (p. 11). He rejects older scholarship by Ira Berlin and others who asserted that free persons of color were "'slaves without masters'" who existed between "'abject slavery'" and "'full freedom'" (p. 11). Instead, Milteer contends that free people of color "experienced a freedom that was contested yet worth defending" (p. 12). "Intersecting social hierarchies" of "wealth, gender, occupation, reputation, and religion" resulted in diverse behaviors among free persons of color and a "complex assortment of relations" with white southerners (pp. 2, 4). Seven chapters and a conclusion span from the colonial era to Reconstruction. In chapters 1 and 2, the author compares the lives of free people of color in the colonial South with their counterparts in other empires, noting discrimination along with diversity, complexity, and flexibility. During the American Revolution, "unsettled social landscapes" led to either opportunity or oppression (p. 52). In chapters 3 and 4, Milteer examines the next forty-some years, as white people "struggled to determine the proper place for free people of color" (p. 69). Despite "unprecedented attacks," free persons of color and their allies tempered the success of those who sought to make race the sole criterion to determine status (p. 71). Cross-racial bonds of kinship, community, worship, and business held, and free people of color "found ways to convey their societal importance" (p. 116). They founded separate organizations when "working with whites as equals was not possible or desirable" (p. 122). Chapters 5 and 6 begin with the Nat Turner rebellion, which allowed progressively more radical proslavery whites to push free people of color into an "increasingly inferior legal status" (p. 184). Yet the rebellion did not result in a "revolutionary change in the ways average white southerners thought about" free persons of color (p. 138). In the decades leading up to the Civil War, free people of color could still "find justice in a system not designed for their benefit" as they actively defended their rights (p. 180). In chapter 7's examination of the Civil War, Milteer shows that free persons of color pursued divergent paths based on their complex and layered identities. Utilizing county court minutes, apprenticeship bonds, state legislative records, wills, newspapers, and pension files, Milteer focuses on the realities of day-to-day life instead of the contents of legal codes or extremist rhetoric. He cites Melvin Patrick Ely's Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War (New York, 2005) as an important precursor to his work. Milteer characterizes white southern behavior toward free people of color as "fluid," contradictory, and far from monolithic (p. 5). Free persons of color were vital to society and the economy, and radicals sought—unsuccessfully—to push them to the margins. Milteer concludes that many "find understanding the South before 1865 much easier if we can simplify the social hierarchy," but he argues that doing so offers a skewed picture of reality (p. 254). The author skillfully reveals the sometimes-intersecting values of whites and free people of color, as well as "inconsistencies between the law and everyday behavior," and then provides a framework for understanding them (p. 255). [End Page 773] Scarlet Jernigan Piedmont University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Were security guards responsible for patient's death? Leanne Walsh (for Gareth Walsh, deceased) v. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (Newcastle upon Tyne County Court – Judge Freedman – 19 May 2021)

Were security guards responsible for patient's death? Leanne Walsh (for Gareth Walsh, deceased) v. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (Newcastle upon Tyne County Court – Judge Freedman – 19 May 2021)

“What Really Happened?”: The Life and Death of Olivia Coombs

“What Really Happened?”: The Life and Death of Olivia Coombs

"A Situation That Has Existed for Generations": Double Age, Race, and American Juvenile Justice

"A Situation That Has Existed for Generations":Double Age, Race, and American Juvenile Justice William S. Bush (bio) a 1939 murder case involving two African American adolescent girls garnered almost no attention outside San Antonio, Texas. The city's two daily newspapers barely reported on the facts surrounding the crime and they wrote nothing of the personal histories of the assailant or victim. Moreover, local media sometimes misreported the ages of fifteen-year-old Odessa Haywood and eighteen-year-old Carrie Lee Thompson while conspicuously highlighting their racial identity as "Negro." Some reports identified Haywood, the assailant, as sixteen; one article described Thompson, the victim, as a "woman," even though she was a high school student at the time.1 The only outlet to report in depth about them was the San Antonio Register, the city's Black-owned newspaper. The Register published detailed reports on the two girls, their families, and Haywood's May 1939 jury trial and conviction in the Bexar County Court. Their coverage of the case prompted the Register's editors to issue a dramatic call to action against "a situation that has existed for generations."2 The Register decried the court's inability to place Odessa Haywood in an age-appropriate facility, none of which admitted Black girls. The court's only available placement options were imprisonment in the county jail or unsupervised release—a recurring dilemma across the Jim Crow South and to some extent other regions in the United States.3 Neither option was acceptable to local Black leaders, who moved to protect Haywood from adult punishments while mobilizing to demand access for Black girls to juvenile detention facilities and training schools. More broadly, local Black leaders highlighted the "State's indifference" and "dereliction" in refusing to extend the ostensibly protective benefits of juvenile justice and child welfare to Black children and youth. The Haywood case revived a dormant campaign to build a statewide juvenile training school for [End Page 410] Black girls, who had been largely left out of a wave of juvenile justice reforms that had swept the state during the Progressive Era. By the time of the Haywood case, official neglect had become the defining experience of Black girls in American juvenile justice, and particularly in Texas, where a combination of law and custom invoked the application of "double age." The white "child-savers" who founded and administered juvenile justice typically excluded Black children and youth from their vision of protected childhood. Instead, Black children were viewed as too "insensate" to respond to nurture, as being fully formed "hard clay" and less amenable to rehabilitation.4 In practice, this thinking produced different results for Black boys and girls under the state's juvenile delinquency laws. In 1913, Texas adopted the sweeping Juvenile Delinquency Court Act that granted original jurisdiction to the juvenile courts over boys under age seventeen and girls under age eighteen. The law explicitly mandated racial segregation in juvenile justice.5 For Black boys from the state's urban areas, segregation meant heightened incarceration. Black boys were overrepresented in local juvenile detention facilities as well as the state's sprawling youth prison. They were confined to a racially segregated dormitory that was often overcrowded and poorly maintained. When the youth prison introduced academic and vocational schooling, it excluded Black boys altogether, subjecting them instead to agricultural labor. Texas abolished convict leasing in its adult prisons in 1912, but it continued for decades in the state's youth prisons. Much like their adult counterparts in the prisons, Black boys toiled on private farms, including some owned by state employees, in addition to farming state-owned land. White officials justified these practices by portraying Black boys as incipient adult criminals, while news reports described Black boys solely in terms of the threat they supposedly posed to public safety. For Black girls, state-mandated segregation meant they received comparatively little attention from juvenile justice authorities. Black girls charged with status or even criminal offenses typically were released back into their communities with no official supervision. Local governments in major cities such as Houston, Dallas, or Haywood's home city of San Antonio committed few resources in the form of juvenile probation...

Inter-judicial differences in approaching technical violations: Examining the interaction of judge and compliance issue for domestic violence probationers.

Few studies have examined differences in the sentencing practices of judges within a jurisdiction. Even more limited is research examining differences across judges in domestic violence courts despite the large amount of discretion afforded to judges in these courts in sanctioning decisions. The current study utilized data from a large urban county court to determine whether significant differences existed across judges in allocating a jail sanction in the domestic violence court. Three hundred forty seven probation review hearings in which at least one act of noncompliance were examined. Findings suggest significant differences in the use of jail for prohibited substance abuse, but not for other forms of noncompliance. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Acts in the South: Federalism, Irony, and the Conflict of Jurisdictions, 1787–1861

Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Acts in the South:Federalism, Irony, and the Conflict of Jurisdictions, 1787–1861 Alice L. Baumgartner (bio) In 1853, a runaway slave from Maryland named George Smith was caught in Pennsylvania.1 Under the terms of the new Fugitive Slave Act that Congress had passed three years earlier, Smith was not entitled to a jury trial. Instead, the act authorized federal magistrates, "upon satisfactory proof being made," to grant certificates that empowered slaveholders to "pursue and reclaim" any "person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States" who "shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States." Fugitive slaves could not testify in their own defense or dispute their detention in court—the basic right of habeas corpus. The commissioners' decisions could not be appealed.2 In accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, George Smith's captors hauled him before a federal magistrate in Philadelphia. But before the magistrate could sign the certificate for Smith's removal, a writ of habeas corpus arrived from the Philadelphia County Court of Quarter Sessions. George Smith had been earlier indicted for assault and battery. The writ ordered the U.S. marshal to deliver the fugitive slave to the county sheriff, who would bring him to the state courthouse. The federal [End Page 475] magistrate had to decide whether to return Smith to his captors or to the Court of Quarter Sessions. More broadly, the order raised the question: did Pennsylvania criminal law take precedence over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850? The magistrate had good reason to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act and return Smith to his Maryland captors. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, in what is commonly known as the supremacy clause, stated that federal laws should take precedence over state laws. In addition, the United States Supreme Court had denied in 1842 the constitutionality of "any state law or regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the rights of the owner to the immediate command of his service or labor." The federal magistrate returned George Smith to his owner, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.3 George Smith's fate—and that of other runaways north of the Mason-Dixon Line—is well known to scholars of slavery and the antebellum United States.4 But scholars have largely ignored how the law worked in the South—a significant oversight given that the vast majority of fugitive slaves never crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.5 This omission is based on the reasonable assumption that southern whites were so [End Page 476] committed to the institution of slavery that they returned runaways to their owners as a matter of course. But like the nonslaveholding states, slaveholding states did pass laws that sometimes conflicted with slaveholders' constitutional right to recover their fugitive slaves.6 One such law was at issue in another fugitive slave case, which resembled George Smith's in every particular except where the runaway was caught. In 1852, a fugitive slave named Solomon Smith was captured in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. But before he could be returned to his owner, he was charged with "firing at and wounding, with intent to kill, Mr. Wm. Hungerford," while Hungerford was attempting to capture Smith and a number of other "runaway rascals who [had] for months infested" the parish. This case exposed what historian Ariela J. Gross calls the "double character" of slavery: on the one hand, enslaved people were persons, capable of committing crimes and standing trial for them; on the other, they were property, destined to be returned to their owners. The question before the court was whether Solomon Smith should be returned, as property, to his owner or tried, as a person, for his crimes. Although Solomon Smith committed a similar crime as George Smith (no relation), the court in Louisiana reached the opposite decision from the magistrate in Pennsylvania. In Louisiana, the right of a slaveholder to recover his property appeared not to take precedence over state criminal law. Solomon Smith was tried and sentenced to be hanged.7 Criminal statutes were not the only state...

The most persistent rape myth? A qualitative study of ‘delay’ in complaint in Victorian rape trials

ABSTRACT One of the oldest myths to confound the achievement of justice for victims of sexual violence is that ‘genuine’ rape victims complain immediately, loudly and officially. Dismantling this myth—or at least banishing it from the court room—has been a high priority of the modern era of rape/sexual assault law reform. How successful has this attempt been? This article reports on the initial findings of a transcript analysis study of more than 30 rape trials finalised in the County Court of Victoria between 2013 and 2020. We discuss the multiple variations on ‘delay’ that continue to feature prominently in the cross-examination of complainants in rape trials. We also examine the operation of s 52 of the Jury Directions Act 2015 (Vic) which provides for a mandatory direction if, at any point during the trial, the judge considers that there is evidence suggestive of delay. Ostensibly one of the strongest corrective mechanisms currently operating in sexual offence trials in Australia, we discuss the unevenness of s 52’s operation, and consider the implications for reliance on jury directions more generally.

Characteristics of US hospitals using extraordinary collections actions against patients for unpaid medical bills: a cross-sectional study

ObjectiveThis study aims to characterise and evaluate the largest 100 hospitals in the USA that have adopted aggressive collection tactics to pursue patients with unpaid medical bills, such as lawsuits,...