State Chief Research Articles

The Pros and Cons of Technology in the Judicial Process in Lagos State, Nigeria

The application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of humans to the change and manipulation of the human environment is called technology. Its application to the judicial process in Lagos State Judiciary has made it easier to access information, file court processes, enable swift, and accurate research, and improve the delivery of justice thereby curbing the delay in the dispensation of justice though this is with some qualifications. The study juxtaposed and analysed the advancement of technology in the judicial process in Lagos State, Nigeria. Historical and case study designs were adopted. Doctrinal method was used in data collection. The primary sources of data were the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), Lagos State High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules 2019; Magistrates’ Court (Civil Procedure) Rules 2009; Lagos State Chief Judge Practice Direction dated April 27, 2020; sources of secondary data were published textbooks, law reports, scholarly peer-reviewed journals, and articles. Data were content-analysed and presented thematically. Findings revealed that technology is needed for the advancement, development, and growth of the judicial process in Lagos State. Many a lawyer and litigants have not utilised the technology in the state’s judiciary. There is no clear legislation in the state protecting or guiding the utilisation of technology in the judiciary save the practice direction issued by the state’s chief judge in 2020. The study concluded that technology is necessary in advancing the judicial process in Lagos State. The study recommended that lawyers and litigants are to be properly educated vide seminars on how to ustilised technology in advancing the judicial process. The Lagos State House of Assembly should initiate a bill for the utilisation and applicability of the technology in the state’s judiciary.

Using Natural Language Processing to Predict Fatal Drug Overdose From Autopsy Narrative Text: Algorithm Development and Validation Study.

Fatal drug overdose surveillance informs prevention but is often delayed because of autopsy report processing and death certificate coding. Autopsy reports contain narrative text describing scene evidence and medical history (similar to preliminary death scene investigation reports) and may serve as early data sources for identifying fatal drug overdoses. To facilitate timely fatal overdose reporting, natural language processing was applied to narrative texts from autopsies. This study aimed to develop a natural language processing-based model that predicts the likelihood that an autopsy report narrative describes an accidental or undetermined fatal drug overdose. Autopsy reports of all manners of death (2019-2021) were obtained from the Tennessee Office of the State Chief Medical Examiner. The text was extracted from autopsy reports (PDFs) using optical character recognition. Three common narrative text sections were identified, concatenated, and preprocessed (bag-of-words) using term frequency-inverse document frequency scoring. Logistic regression, support vector machine (SVM), random forest, and gradient boosted tree classifiers were developed and validated. Models were trained and calibrated using autopsies from 2019 to 2020 and tested using those from 2021. Model discrimination was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic, precision, recall, F1-score, and F2-score (prioritizes recall over precision). Calibration was performed using logistic regression (Platt scaling) and evaluated using the Spiegelhalter z test. Shapley additive explanations values were generated for models compatible with this method. In a post hoc subgroup analysis of the random forest classifier, model discrimination was evaluated by forensic center, race, age, sex, and education level. A total of 17,342 autopsies (n=5934, 34.22% cases) were used for model development and validation. The training set included 10,215 autopsies (n=3342, 32.72% cases), the calibration set included 538 autopsies (n=183, 34.01% cases), and the test set included 6589 autopsies (n=2409, 36.56% cases). The vocabulary set contained 4002 terms. All models showed excellent performance (area under the receiver operating characteristic ≥0.95, precision ≥0.94, recall ≥0.92, F1-score ≥0.94, and F2-score ≥0.92). The SVM and random forest classifiers achieved the highest F2-scores (0.948 and 0.947, respectively). The logistic regression and random forest were calibrated (P=.95 and P=.85, respectively), whereas the SVM and gradient boosted tree classifiers were miscalibrated (P=.03 and P<.001, respectively). "Fentanyl" and "accident" had the highest Shapley additive explanations values. Post hoc subgroup analyses revealed lower F2-scores for autopsies from forensic centers D and E. Lower F2-score were observed for the American Indian, Asian, ≤14 years, and ≥65 years subgroups, but larger sample sizes are needed to validate these findings. The random forest classifier may be suitable for identifying potential accidental and undetermined fatal overdose autopsies. Further validation studies should be conducted to ensure early detection of accidental and undetermined fatal drug overdoses across all subgroups.

NFTs and Value

NFTs and Value

Indonesian State System Based on Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution: A Contemporary Developments

In conducting the state implementation, Indonesia as a state needs regulations in accordance with the national cultural values. The values are mirrored in Pancasilaas the spirit of constitutional law which is The Constitution 1945. Indonesian governmental system is presidential; the president is the state chief and the governmental chief. The state power is in three powers, that are legislative, executive, andjudicial powers. Those three powers have relations in sharing the powers. This practice is not the same as the original theory of Montesquei about power divisions. In the implementation, The Constitution 1945 has supporting institutions. They are People's Consultative Council, House ofrepresentative, President, Supreme Court, Constitutional Council, Judicial Commission, Financial investigator, Police, and the Army.

COVID-19, Reverse Migration and Crisis Management: A Study of the Model of Government of Uttar Pradesh (India)

With the outbreak of the global pandemic of COVID-19, India witnessed one of the largest reverse migrations in its entire history. Amid continuously streaming heart-rending visuals of migrant workers struggling to somehow return to their place of origin, Uttar Pradesh emerged as the recipient of huge 3.2 million migrant workers employed in the informal sector. Accepting, welcoming, helping, encouraging and offering employment to those destitute workers amid the pandemic was a difficult task for the state government. An appropriate management of this problem has made it a classic case of crisis management by a state chief minister who dares to think beyond the reflex paranoia about resource crunch so as to come up with an improvised strategy. Purpose of this article is to discuss the crisis of reverse migration amid COVID-19 and the initiatives taken by the Government of Uttar Pradesh. The article uses case study approach to analyse the problem of livelihood faced by the migrant workers and the innovative model of employment and rehabilitation envisioned and implemented by the state government. Based on secondary data, it observes positive impact of skill mapping and other key strategies of the Government of Uttar Pradesh.

Swineherds and Hogs on Ice: Leadership Impacts for State Chief Judges

Chief judges stand as visible leaders of their courts. Analyses of the Supreme Court focus on the role of the chief justice as an institution-builder seeking out public-facing consensus to protect Court legitimacy. Studying the powers of chief judges and political leadership in general is difficult. Analyzing all 50 states over 16 years we find no evidence that the identity of chief judges explains consensus behavior any better than random chance. This is true even among the subset of chief judges with additional institutional powers like opinion assignment. We show that court structures explain consensus, while leader features do not. Being chief judge correlates with an elevated likelihood of being in the majority, particularly in cases decided by one vote. These results add to our understanding of leadership on courts and imply that the office of chief judge at the state level is more symbolic than uniquely powerful.

The Convention-Constitution Standoff: Resolving the Most-Senior-Judge Conundrum in Appointment of Substantive Chief Judges for States in Nigeria

The head of the High Court of a State in Nigeria is known as the Chief Judge of the State. Section 271(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 provides that the appointment of a person to the office of substantive Chief Judge of a State shall be made by the Governor of the State on the recommendation of the National Judicial Council subject to confirmation of the appointment by the House of Assembly of the State. By virtue of section 271(4) of the Constitution, if the office of Chief Judge of a State becomes vacant or if the person holding the office is for any reason unable to perform the functions of the office, then until a person has been appointed to and has assumed the functions of that office, or until the person holding the office has resumed those functions, the Governor of the State shall appoint the most senior Judge of the State High Court to perform those functions. However, the Governor as the appointing authority and the National Judicial Council as the recommending authority, have always been at loggerheads over the latter`s insistence that the most senior judge in a State be appointed the substantive Chief Judge of the State. The position of the NJC is based on the convention within the legal profession, which places great premium on adherence to seniority and professional hierarchy. On the other hand, State Governors believe they possess a constitutional discretionary powers to appoint as the substantive Chief Judge of the State, any person qualified for such appointment, irrespective of whether such a person is or is not the most senior judge in the State. The insistence of the NJC that the convention pertaining to seniority must be respected, has more often than not, set the NJC on a collision course with various State Governors in Nigeria, usually leading to stalemates in the process of such appointments which, in turn adversely affect the smooth operations of affected State High Courts and the administration of justice in general. The latest of such conflicts was in Gombe State of Nigeria where the NJC insistence on seniority (conventionalism) and the Gombe State Governor’s insistence on constitutionalism has left the State without a substantive Chief Judge up to the time of this paper. This paper is the first part of a two-armed dispassionate examination of all issues surrounding this seemingly unending conflict, the aim of the authors being to expose the actual position of extant law on the subject with a view to recommending solutions founded on rule of law, realism and democratic constitutionalism. Using the scenario in Gombe State as a case study, and drawing from provisions of the National Judicial policy, the paper discusses the position of rule of law, and why religious adherence to the supremacy of rule of law is the best way out of the persistent logjam. The second part of this discussion, already concluded and sent for publication, is titled “Limits of the Recommending Powers of the National Judicial Council in the Process of Appointment of State Chief Judges in Nigeria: Gombe State as a Case Study”

An Efficient and Securable Networked Voting System based on Blockchain

Modern period of trend setting innovation where online framework supports work speed, lessens botches and advances the age of exact outcomes, having manual political decision framework turns into a mishap. An open political decision framework establishes the foundation of a vote based system where the individuals need to choose their state's chief. India as of now utilizes a manual political decision framework, which causes a few sorts of issues. Because of this paper polling form based political race framework, a few issues are looked by voters previously or during races and others are looked by the organization when the democratic. An online framework, which includes strategies like enlistment of voters, vote throwing, vote tallying, and announcing results would comprise a decent answer for supplant current framework and the proposed framework right now be useful for the voters by utilizing any assets like their own framework or masterminded by Government. Additionally, the proposed framework will likewise diminish the hazard for defilement. The framework is proposed subsequent to talking authorities of two offices, the Country Database and Enrollment Authority India (NADRA) and the Political decision Commission of India (ECP). NADRA has an online database of the residents of India, and is giving the Modernized National Personality Cards (CNIC) and furthermore supporting various associations with their online framework. Along these lines, by utilizing NADRA's framework it turns out to be anything but difficult to enroll all voters of the age above 18, and besides to check and verify their information

Developing Mindful and Targeted Data Visualizations for Diverse Audiences

Developing Mindful and Targeted Data Visualizations for Diverse Audiences

"Fuzzy as a Georgia Peach": The Ford Campaign and the Challenge of Jimmy Carter's Southernness

"Fuzzy as a Georgia Peach"The Ford Campaign and the Challenge of Jimmy Carter's Southernness Zachary J. Lechner (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution With much on the line—but virtually nothing to lose—Ford undertook a halting, intermittently bold, and ultimately ill-fated campaign to undermine Carter's regional credibility. "Peanut Crusher" poster from the 1976 Republican National Convention, courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum. [End Page 62] America's bicentennial was supposed to be a year of triumphant celebration. Although the nation could look back proudly on its founding, the present looked grim. Americans, after all, were still reeling from the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's subsequent resignation from the presidency, and many were feeling beaten down by a dilapidated economy beset by the confusing problem of stagflation—high unemployment, high inflation, and weak consumer demand. 1976 was also an election year. Running as the incumbent, Nixon's replacement and pardoner, Gerald Ford, presented himself as a steady hand: not flashy, but competent, and capable of leading Americans out of their economic funk—at some point. His challenger, Democrat Jimmy Carter, suggested he would do more than offer competent leadership, regain Americans' trust, and fix the economy. He would also usher the nation out of its existential doldrums, and perhaps even move it beyond the racial and political divisions of the '60s. He would, in short, heal its wounds. These were bold claims made all the more remarkable by Carter's assertion that his southern background empowered him to cure the nation's ills. Sensing the American public's fascination with Carter's southernness during the 1976 presidential contest, Gerald Ford's Republican strategists turned to another southerner for advice. Their choice—Frances Kaye Pullen—perhaps revealed their desperation to combat a key part of the former Georgia governor's appeal. The Tennessee-born Pullen had crafted speeches for President Ford before she was transferred to Betty Ford's staff, where she performed the same duties for the First Lady; she was hardly a member of the Ford campaign's inner circle. Nevertheless, Pullen submitted a detailed and carefully crafted memo (more like "an essay," she joked). In it, she concluded that Carter successfully merged different versions of a fantasied South, enabling him to attract fellow southerners hoping to gain nonsouthern respect for their oft-maligned region and using his southernness to charm voters living outside of the region. "Carter," Pullen observed, "is playing upon two essentially conflicting myths—the 'good ole boy' rural South and the 'black and white together' new South." And his "use of the southern mystique" was nothing more than "hoke," a false picture of the region that the news media were all too eager to disseminate.1 Folksy insults aside, Pullen captured one of the central strengths of Carter's campaign: his ability to deploy captivating southern symbols that connected with voters both regionally and nationally. Carter hailed from rural southern Georgia, where he oversaw a prosperous peanut business. His presidential run occurred during a key moment: just after the Civil Rights Movement, when a racially progressive white southerner like himself could be seen as a mainstream figure well-suited to deal with the country's racial divides. He benefited from other accidents of circumstance, as well. For example, the Georgia constitution at the time prohibited the sitting governor from succeeding himself. This meant that when Carter's [End Page 63] single term as the state's chief executive ended in 1975, he was left with unlimited time to vie for the presidency. This last factor, coupled with Democratic Party rule changes on fundraising and delegate selection, made Carter's populist style of one-on-one campaigning incredibly effective. The Atlanta Constitution's editor had ridiculed him as a joke candidate when he first announced his presidential bid; by early 1976, he was a viable White House hopeful.2 In labeling Carter's southernness an asset, Pullen revealed that she had been paying attention to popular culture in addition to politics. By the mid-1970s, the white South had been, in some ways, rehabilitated on the screen and in print. Carter's campaign for the White...

Do CIO IT Budgets Explain Bigger or Smaller Governments? Theory and Evidence from U.S. State Governments

Given the recent concern on “big governments” and rising budget deficits in the United States and European nations, there has been a fundamental economic debate on the proper boundary and role of governments in a society. Inspired by this debate, we study the relationship between information technology (IT) and government size. Drawing on a broad range of the literature from multiple disciplines such as information systems, industrial organization, and political sciences, we present several theoretical mechanisms that explain the impact of IT on government expenditures. Using a variety of data on IT spending and state government expenditures, we find that greater IT investments made by a state chief information officer (CIO) are associated with lower state government spending. It is estimated that on average, a $1 increase in state CIO budgets is associated with a reduction of as much as $3.49 in state overall expenditures. This study contributes to the literature by identifying a key technological factor that affects government spending and showing that IT investments can be a means to restrain government growth. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.

Electoral Politics in Madhya Pradesh: Explaining the BJP Consolidation

Two important elections held in close succession—the December 2013 Assembly elections and the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections—in the state of Madhya Pradesh emphatically underline the consolidation achieved by the BJP. Overriding anti-incumbency, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in the state returned to power and rode on the crest of the popularity of the state chief minister and the BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to put up a creditable performance in the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP was helped by strong anti-incumbency against the UPA, on the one hand, and the organizational ineffectiveness of the Congress party at the state level, on the other. This article attempts an analysis of the factors and forces that contributed to the BJP consolidating its position in the state in the recent years.

Historical of Industrial Development Strategies in Penang over the Last Five Decades: A Study of the SMEs

The aim of this paper is to examine the history of industrial development strategies with respect to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The history of economic development in Penang provides a backdrop for subsequent development. In Penang, the structural transformation of the state was enabled by the leadership of four State Chief Ministers. Firstly, under the leadership of Wong Pow Nee, we saw the establishment of Mak Mandin and the Perai Industrial area. Secondly, under Lim Chong Eu there was the transformation of Penang into an industrialized entity. The rapid economic transformation during this period using the Penang Development Corporation as a facilitating mechanism made a big impact on the Industrial Free Trade Zone, especially in terms of utilizing the industrial policy to improve employment opportunities. Thirdly, efforts were made by Koh Tsu Koon, the third State Chief Minister who took initiative to uplift SMEs in the 1990s through global supplier programs in PDC. Koh Ksu Koon improved the framework that was inherited from Lim Chong Eu. Finally, from 2008 onwards, under the leadership of Lim Guan Eng, the secretary-general of DAP, the national opposition party that is currently ruling the state of Penang, the state has changed its direction of development whereby besides concentrating on the electronic sector, it has also promoted Penang as a centre for medical tourism industry. This shift in development and sectoral paradigm is due to the challenges faced by Penang from global competitors, namely Malaysia’s neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Cambodia as well as the influence of China.

How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency. By Saladin M.Ambar. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. 184 pp.

How Built the Modern American Presidency. By Saladin M. Ambar. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. 184 pp. only Saladin Ambar's small, elegantly written book was available years ago. I needed it when, as a Fulbrighter lecturing in Asia, I was again and again asked to explain how and why we Americans regularly advanced provincial politicians--governors with no experience in national government or international matters--as potential chief executives of the most powerful nation on earth. I did what I could. I explained the career paths to the presidency created by the federal nature of the American political and governmental systems. I talked about the intergovernmental aspects of national domestic policy. I suggested that the governance roles and administrative responsibilities of a state chief executive were far more analogous to the president's than those of a national legislator. But if I had this book, I would have been able to say with confidence: Governors are not only rightly considered for the job; they created it in its modern form. Ambar identifies five elements of the modern presidency for which he finds roots in the legacies of governor/presidents: assertive legislative the use of party dominance as a presidential resource, sophisticated media management, an embrace of the role of chief administrator of the government, and a commitment to executive-centered governance (p.5). He finds the Tilden-Hayes presidential election in 1876 to be a watershed moment, the first time that the two major parties' presidential nominees were both sitting governors. Tilden and Hayes helped spawn a new thinking in executive leadership, he writes, positioning the American governorship as a popular and characteristically 'honest' executive institution for democratic reform (p. 32). Grover Cleveland (also a former mayor, of Buffalo) was storied for his use of the veto and his willingness to exercise national power on his own authority; he provided the governor/ president bridge to the Progressive Era. Progressive theory joined populism (direct democracy) and the emerging corporate model (governor/president as chief executive) to recast the elected executive as tribune of the people. This was, of course, a stark alternative to then prevalent legislative- and party-centered government, defended as constitutionally prescribed. At the state level, to effect their vision, progressive reformers changed constitutions wholesale, or sought to (a matter to which Professor Ambar gives only passing attention). At the national level, with constitutional amendment or revision much harder, change was achieved through reinterpretation, driven by the actions of governor/presidents. During his campaign for governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson, the political-scientist governor/president, embraced rather than resisted the idea that his expansive, popular-based view of executive office was unconstitutional. If you elect me I will be an unconstitutional governor in that respect, he said. …

Cybersecurity Management In the States: The Emerging Role of Chief Information Security Officers

Forward by John Bruel and John Lainhart: On behalf of the IBM Center for The Business of Government, we are pleased to present this report, 'Cybersecurity Management in the States: The Emerging Role of Chief Information Security Officers,' by Marilu Goodyear, Holly T. Goerdel, Shannon Portillo, and Linda Williams. The importance of safeguarding information created and shared on computers and the internet has increased significantly in recent years, as society has become increasingly dependent on information technology in government, business, and in their personal lives. Both corporations and government have responded by creating a new role in their organizations to lead the safeguarding efforts - chief information security officers. The role of these officers is still under development. Do they safeguard best by using law enforcement techniques and technological tools? Or are they more effective if they serve as educators and try to influence the behaviors of technology users? This report is a significant contribution to the discussion of the roles and responsibilities of chief information security officers (CISOs) in state governments across the United States. It identifies both strategies and activities used by successful state CISOs, and thereby provides a good road map to success for all state CISOs.The report cites the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which has been championed since its inception by the New York state chief cybersecurity officer as one key cybersecurity collaboration success. The MS-ISAC initiative has yielded measurable results and provided a means of consistent communication across sectors in society. The report also emphasizes that while a technical education remains important for CISOs, state cybersecurity officials need to be proficient in nontechnical skills as well, including collaboration, communication, managerial, organizational, policy alignment, and political skills. Finally, the report emphasizes the need for state cybersecurity officials to devote increased attention to data management as the defined system/network perimeter has dissolved and the future success of cybersecurity relies on the CISOs, chief information officers, data owners, records managers and archivists to jointly focus on data management to achieve effective business processes. This report also emphasizes the importance of effective IT governance - We hope that you find this report both timely and informative. We believe its insights and recommendations are relevant to CISOs at all levels of government.

Vaccination program in the response to the 2007 equine influenza outbreak in Australia

At the time of the initial notification of the occurrence of equine influenza (EI) in Australia in August 2007, vaccination was restricted to horses for which it was an import requirement and only with the approval of the state or territory Chief Veterinary Officer. This paper describes the complexities involved in the selection of a vaccine and its distribution. A combination of ring, predictive and blanket vaccination was implemented during the response. The specific vaccination programs, including its use in buffer zones and for movement of horses, the performance of the vaccine, any adverse reactions and the effect on exposure of vaccinated horses to circulating virus, are also described. Vaccination is considered to have made a valuable contribution to the containment and subsequent eradication of EI from Australia and to risk management in the resumption of horse activities in affected areas from December 2007. Movement restrictions and other biosecurity measures were critically important in controlling the spread of EI and contributing to its eventual eradication, and vaccination was an aid to these measures.

In this issue: Equine influenza in Australia in 2007 – the definitive story

In this issue: Equine influenza in Australia in 2007 – the definitive story

Public Rights and Private Rights of Action: The Enforcement of Federal Election Laws

In what circumstances should there be a private right of action to sue for violations of federal election statutes. Lying at the intersection of federal courts and election law, this question has arisen in several recent cases, as private litigants have increasingly called upon federal courts to resolve election disputes. The question was before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party (“Brunner”) which alleged that a state chief election official had failed to follow the requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (“HAVA”) pertaining to statewide voter registration lists. In a one-paragraph, unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that a political party could not sue, reversing the lower courts’ conclusion that there was a private right of action. The brevity of the Brunner decision masks the significance and complexity of the larger question. To be sure, the issue in Brunner was a straightforward one under existing private-right-of-action doctrine, which requires an “unambiguously conferred” individual right. The problem is this doctrine fails to account for the vital role that federal courts play in overseeing elections in the United States, especially in pre-election litigation. The availability of a private right of action is especially critical in election cases – and the existing doctrine especially ill-fitting – for both conceptual and practical reasons. On a conceptual level, election cases typically involve non-individuated or collective interests. It follows that the Court’s insistence on an unambiguously conferred individual right makes little sense in election cases. Existing doctrine is also problematic from a practical perspective, given the absence of any institution besides the federal courts with the ability to ensure consistency in the interpretation of federal law. The ultimate consequence is to leave the interpretation of federal election law in the hands of state and local officials, except in those rare instances when the U.S. Attorney General decides to sue. This is particularly troubling given the partisan affiliation of most state and many local election officials, which creates an inherent conflict of interest and makes federal judicial oversight especially important. The Court’s stringent approach to private rights of action is therefore ill-suited to federal election law disputes, because they involve quintessentially public rights for which a federal judicial forum is essential. In Brunner, the Court failed to consider the distinctive character of election controverises. In fact, both the lower courts and the Supreme Court got it wrong in this case – even though they arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. The lower courts incorrectly applied existing precedent, which foreclosed private enforcement of HAVA’s matching requirement. But the Supreme Court was also incorrect, in failing to reconsider this precedent to account for the especially important role the federal courts play in electoral disputes. Though faithfully applying existing doctrine, the Court missed an opportunity to correct – or at least limit – a line of precedent that has unfortunate consequences in the realm of election law. The Article concludes that, in the appropriate case, the Court should revisit Brunner and relax the standard for private enforcement of federal election statutes under Section 1983.

Lethal Injections: Medicine and Research

Lethal Injections:Medicine and Research Jeff Stryker (bio) For the first time in more than a hundred years, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving the constitutionality of a particular method of execution—lethal injection. The case involves Kentucky death row inmates Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling, Jr., who sued in 2004 to challenge the method nearly all death penalty states have adopted: a three-drug cocktail intended first to render the inmate unconscious, then to paralyze and stop his breathing, and finally to stop his heart. Twenty-five years of experience reveals that execution by lethal injection is not the quick or painless event originally envisioned, but frequently a drawn-out affair during which the paralyzing drugs may mask excruciating pain. The debate about lethal injection has centered on whether it is a medical procedure. At least eight states explicitly maintain that it does not constitute medical practice. Last March, a North Carolina superior court judge ruled that the state's medical board did not have the authority to keep doctors from participating because an execution is "not a medical event or medical procedure." The problem is that lethal injections look an awful lot like medical procedures, what with gurneys and syringes and IVs and drugs (albeit far off-label). New Jersey's death penalty statute refers to the lethal chemicals as "execution medications." Wasn't lethal injection supposed to be clinical—isn't that why it's a moral advance over electrocution, hanging, and poison gas? Maybe, however, lethal injection is more like research—a nationwide, government-sponsored clinical trial gone horribly awry. In 1977, when Oklahoma became the first state to recognize lethal injection by statute, Oklahoma legislators turned to A. Jay Chapman, then the state's chief medical examiner, to develop a lethal injection protocol. At first Chapman demurred, saying he "was an expert in dead bodies and not an expert in getting them that way." But he eventually agreed to help, and when he did he jumped right in. "I didn't do any research. I just knew from having been placed under anesthesia myself, what we needed," he told researchers from Human Rights Watch. Despite the casual approach, the protocol was rapidly adopted by virtually all death penalty states. Physicians' reluctance to participate in lethal injection protocols has been one of the problems in implementing them. Lay executioners have often lacked the training or experience to place IVs in the arms of sweating, writhing inmates whose veins may be compromised by years of injection drug use. Some had never held a syringe before the execution. One prison warden didn't realize that mixing the drugs together would create a white sludge that couldn't be injected. Ohio revised its protocol after one execution took ninety minutes, only to have a subsequent execution take two hours. But some physician executioners have been no better. Missouri doctor Alan Doerhoff, who supervised more than fifty executions, had been a defendant in more than twenty malpractice suits and had his privileges revoked at two hospitals. Court testimony revealed his problem with drug dosages: "[I] am dyslexic . . . so it's not unusual for me to make mistakes." Executions have been compromised in other ways, too. Many executions take place in the middle of the night in poorly lit rooms, forcing some executioners to inject the drugs by flashlight. A federal judge recently faulted California's Corrections Department for "lack of meaningful training, supervision and oversight of the execution team," "inconsistent and unreliable record-keeping," and "inadequate lighting, overcrowded conditions, and poorly designed facilities." If lethal injection were any other government-sponsored clinical trial, a Data Safety Monitoring Board would have shut it down years ago. But there is no DSMB for clinical trials of lethal injection: no government agencies or entities have embraced responsibility for how executions are carried out. Now, perhaps, the government and the wider public will have at long last an opportunity to take a hard look the nation's ongoing clinical experiment with lethal execution. It may be time to halt the trial. [End Page c3] Jeff Stryker Jeff Stryker is a Connecticut writer specializing in health policy and...

Charles V. Riley, France, and Phylloxera

In this paper, the authors examine Charles V. Riley's relationship with France and French scientists (1855–1895), with special reference to Riley's role in the Phylloxera campaign (ca. 1869–1885). Riley's French connections represent a significant aspect of a projected full-length Riley biography. Riley was born and reared in England; he made his career as an agricultural entomologist in the United States. Nevertheless, his tenure at a boarding school in Dieppe, France (1855–1857) established Francophile patterns that persisted throughout his life. For example, he entered portions of his personal diary in French, made eight trips to France, and placed two daughters in French finishing schools. Most important, Riley's early French contact prepared him, as Missouri State Entomologist (1868–1877) and Chief U.S. Entomologist (1878–1894), to join with Jules Emile Planchon, Jules Lichtenstein, Victor Signoret, and other French scientists in the historic campaign against the grape Phylloxera in France. Riley's field studies, experiments, articles, illustrations, and American Phylloxera specimens helped establish key aspects of the Phylloxera 's life history. With American data, he confirmed that the American and European Phylloxera were identical and that the species originated in America; he also discovered the previously unknown American root form and demonstrated its polymorphic relationship to the leaf form. Riley was able to explain, on Darwinian grounds, that the consistent failure of European vines in eastern North America was due to their lack of resistance to Phylloxera . Riley's support of Planchon and Lichtenstein—who held that Phylloxera was the cause of the dying vines, and not an effect as maintained by Signoret and other defenders of “pure” French vineyards—helped the “Americanists” prevail in their diagnosis of the problem. His summary of resistant American vines, along with his drawings and descriptions, helped convince French vintners that the eventual solution lay in grafting French vines on American rootstock. Although Riley withdrew from active participation in Phylloxera affairs after the mid-1880s, he returned to France frequently for rest and recuperation. When Riley represented the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1889, the French government presented him with the Legion of Honor, its highest award, for his assistance in Phylloxera affairs. Official recognition, along with collegial relations with French scientists, and general acceptance and gratitude among the French people, helped compensate for the hostility and conflict Riley frequently experienced among colleagues and superiors in the federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Riley's partnership with the French in the Phylloxera challenge not only allowed him to repay his debt of gratitude to France, but also to demonstrate how the fledgling field of economic entomology could meet a major insect crisis in the international arena.