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This article explores a high-profile review of cases of alleged historical investigatory police bias in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, referred to in The New York Times article, “When Gangs Killed Men for Sport: Australia Reviews 88 Deaths.” The title of the article contains the terms of a well-known feature of moral panic—a discovered crime fact and demand for an enforcement response disproportionate to the fact. Our analysis explores the response to the review of the list of cases, Strike Force Parrabell, as an illustration of runaway constructionism. Demand group-interest in the positive designation of the cases (as bias crime) was a means of acknowledging the prejudicial conduct of police during a time of wider attitudinal change. In spearheading the verification of this list of cases, demand groups and crusaders placed a high semiotic burden beyond its capacity as a comparable objective measure. The fitness of the list of 88 cases as a totem for police and societal wrongdoing requires evidence regarding disproportionality based on valid and reliable measures. Despite worldwide interest in NSW for its comparative high ranking in gay bias homicides, however, such ranking does not exist. Nonetheless, despite the impossibility that it stands in as proof of decades long prejudice, corruption or criminal negligence, the list of cases appears to do so anyway. As such, it is illustrative of the occupation of media frames and formats by weak data or of the runaway character of crime stories in an era of “fake news.”

The aim of this article is to show difficulties arising when courts judge the negligence of dog owners in absence of precise legislation and typical precedents. We analyze the elements of a crime in two cases where children were objects of canine aggression, and show how the courts constructed the issue of dog owners’ negligence. In Case 1 the Court of Appeal found that a foster parent was not negligent when leaving a boy with specific needs alone with a heavily built dog that then repeatedly bit the boy to death despite the owners attempt to pull away the dog. The court also ignored the signs of substandard animal husbandry including previous severe incidents where the dog owner also was injured. In Case 2, the Court of Appeal instead found that the breed of the dog also matter, and that not even adult presence is enough to protect a child from dog attack. Because both the child and the dog could behave unpredictably, continuous observation and supervision was required. In both cases, measures to prevent the incident were available and would have been easy to carry out.

Most children who receive sedation outside the operating room have good outcomes and benefit from efforts to reduce pain and anxiety during a procedure. However, administration of sedative and analgesic agents to children in the outpatient setting always carries some risk to the patient. If a child has an adverse outcome after sedation, and there is evidence of substandard care then there is the potential for a professional liability (“malpractice”) claim against the providers and/or the facility. It is difficult to track with any reliability the actual results of all such claims throughout the USA, in part because there is no uniform national system to report jury verdicts and judgments in state courts that are not appealed. Further, if a malpractice case is settled prior to a jury verdict, the details of those settlements are often kept confidential by the agreement of parties, typically at the request of the medical providers or their insurance carriers. A review of publicly available reports has identified several pediatric sedation claims of alleged negligence. In each of these malpractice cases, the allegations were that the care provided by the professionals (and/or institution) was below an established standard of care, that there was a breach of that standard and that the breach caused injury to the patient. Standard of care is defined as that care which a reasonable physician in a particular specialty would have given to a similar patient, under similar circumstances. Because most clinicians have similar access to information and knowledge, they are usually held to a national standard of care regardless of how remotely the individual may practice.

In this article, I advance a culpability-based justification for command responsibility. Command responsibility has attracted powerful, principled criticisms, particularly that its controversial “should have known” fault standard may breach the culpability principle. Scholars are right to raise such questions, as a negligence-based mode of accessory liability seems to chafe against our analytical constructs. However, I argue, in three steps, that the intuition of justice underlying the doctrine is sound. An upshot of this analysis is that the “should have known” standard in the ICC Statute, rather than being shunned, should be embraced. While Tribunal jurisprudence shied away from criminal negligence due to culpability concerns, I argue that the “should have known” standard actually maps better onto personal culpability than the rival formulations developed by the Tribunals.

The post-World War II Australian military war crimes trials of Japanese from 1945–51 have been criticised for using a rule of evidence considerably relaxed from the ordinary requirements of a criminal trial, one that did not require witnesses to give evidence in person. Circumstantial evidence suggests that, in relation to a trial held in Darwin in March 1946 for war crimes committed in Timor, the secretive Special Operations Australia, otherwise known as the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), took advantage of the rule. This article argues that the SRD did not allow their members to give evidence in person in an attempt to control and limit the dissemination of information about their operational and security failures in Timor from 1943–45. The SRD operation was adjudged by its own official historian as displaying ‘gross inefficiency and criminal negligence’. While the SRD’s failures were known to select personnel at the time, access restrictions to archival records in the post-war period,...

In spite of following one of the best management strategies, by the competent doctors with best available infrastructures in patient care, undesired results harming the patient cannot be avoided. Does it mean all these undesired results causing damage to the patient are as a result of medical negligence? Nowadays, patients are more aware of their rights on account of increased literacy level, role of print, electronic and social media and above all enactment of new law i.e. Consumer Protection Act 1986.Though the question of medical negligence is decided by Courts, but Courts on their own are not trained in medical science. Their decision is based on expert’s opinion. Judges apply the basic principle of law in conjunction with the law of land to make a decision. Reasonableness and prudence are the guiding factors. This paper deals with the legal aspects of medical negligence i.e. what is negligence and its type and various judgements especially the Jacob Mathew vs. State of Punjab 2005 and Anr, Martin F.D’Souza vs. Mohd. Ishfaq 2009, V. Kishan Rao vs. Nikhil Super Specialty Hospital 2010 delivered by the Apex Court to make the law of negligence more rational and directions given to subordinate Courts, various Consumer Fora, State and investigating agencies regarding procedures to be followed before filing a complaint or registering a case of criminal negligence against the doctor.

This chapter consists of a brief discussion on some legal aspects concerning scientists’ responsibility in risk prevention processes. After proposing some introductory considerations on scientists’ responsibility as such, the author deals with the L’Aquila earthquake crisis of 2009, when a strong quake destroyed significant parts of L’Aquila (Italy) and surrounding villages, killing more than 300 people. The chapter focuses on the relations between scientific knowledge, normative expectations, decision-making and criminal negligence for ‘failed’ risk assessment and management, paying particular attention to the role of ‘regulatory science’ in constructing the ‘reasonable person’ normative standard of care in the theory of criminal negligence. This allows explaining why the first judgement in the L’Aquila trial (2012) is not convincing, having misunderstood how policy-relevant science should participate in prevention processes and the construction of normative standards. In his conclusions, the author suggests some reasons for the recent tendency to blame experts when natural or technological disasters occur.

The article introduces analysis of subjective grounds for guilt – a necessary condition for criminal liability of every person. Guilt is defined as a condemned and punishable by the state culprit’s integral relation (either intentional or through negligence) with the crime or criminal misdemeanour. The article reveals guilt’s connection with general attributes of a criminal act (age, capacity) and puts forward a justification for a state’s right and obligation both in legal and social sense to punish culprits. The article is based on research of application of guilt concept in case-law since the Lithuanian Criminal Code came into force (May 1, 2013). It shows that occasional defects and mistakes occur as unclear, ambiguous conclusions about forms, contents of guilt or as inconsistent characterizations of guilt forms, separate features of its sorts. Also, consequences caused by these mistakes for participants in the criminal process are evaluated. The article also explores provisions of criminal law which determine the concept of guilt. Analysis led to conclusion that reckless guilt in the Criminal Code is defined insufficiently, because it does not provide any description of intellectual reckless guilt (criminal negligence) or is described only partially (criminally false assumption). In justification of negligent guilt in culprit’s criminal act, objective and subjective criteria should be used for both forms of negligence. Also, differences and similarities of criminal negligence and criminally false assumption are presented.

Lawyers’ knowledge of technology — how to provide counsel with sufficient knowledge to be able to effectively challenge the reliability of those technologies (electronic systems and devices) that produce the most frequently used kinds of evidence, e.g.: electronically produced records; mobile phone tracking evidence; breathalyzer/intoxilyzer devices; and, software programs for discovery’s “technology assisted review” stage. More specifically the problem is collectively made up of these individual problems: (1) lawyers don’t know such evidence-producing technology sufficiently well so as to be able to challenge its performance by effective cross-examination and with their own expert witnesses (if Legal Aid will pay for them). (2) law schools don’t teach courses on the necessary interaction between different kinds of technology and the necessary flexibility of rules of procedure as they should be applied in regard to, electronic discovery, disclosure, preliminary inquiries, and admissibility voir dires. See e.g., R. v. Oland 2015 NBQB 245, and, R. v. Oland 2015 NBQB 244, being two pre-trial voir dires on the admissibility of mobile phone tracking evidence for a 2nd degree murder trial. (3) continuing professional development seminars, conference, (CLE) etc., don’t provide such information about technology; (4) the problem is a moving target, i.e., technology is constantly changing and therefore so will the types of technology that produce the most frequently used kinds of evidence; (5) the huge access to justice (A2J) — unaffordable legal services problem means an ever-increasing number of persons appearing in courts, particularly criminal courts, without lawyers, thus greatly increasing the probability of wrongful convictions and wrongful guilty pleas — such unrepresented persons can’t challenge the complex sources of the evidence used against them; (6) Prosecutors don’t know such technology either, and therefore can’t inform investigating officers what to watch out for and obtain; (7) the police aren’t trained about such technical sources, such that the prosecutor’s duty to disclose, “the fruits of the investigation” that R. v. Stinchcomb 1991 CanLII 45 (SCC, Nov. 7, 1991), requires be disclosed to defence counsel, may be very inadequate, but defence and prosecuting counsel, and their law school professors don’t know what they don't know as to technology; (8) because most of the evidence used in both criminal and civil proceedings now comes from the same sources, most of the great complexity of rules that now burden electronic discovery in civil proceedings, should apply to disclosure in criminal proceedings, but so far, they don’t; (9) lawyers and police officers don’t know about the National Standards of Canada (or the comparable, U.S., DoD’s 5015.2 standard for records management) that establish the required practices and procedures for the proper operation of such technology, such as electronic records managements systems' technology; (10) at a preliminary inquiry, counsel cannot specify whether “committal for trial is in issue,” if the quality of the, manufacturing, use, and maintenance of the technology that produces the prosecution’s evidence is not known; (11) defense counsel needs a constitutional right to a traditional full preliminary inquiry so as to be able to cross-examine witnesses (or demand that witnesses be made available for cross-examination) to learn enough about the technology that produced the evidence to be used by the prosecution at trial; But instead, Bill C-75, Second Reading, June 11, 2018 (in the Canadian Parliament), proposes to restrict the availability of a preliminary inquiry to offences punishable by life imprisonment, and to strengthen the judge’s ability to limit the issues to be explored and the witnesses to be heard, i.e., the proposed amendments would abolish the preliminary inquiry for all but those offences involving a maximum punishment of life imprisonment, which offences range from murder to criminal negligence causing death. Law societies have to formally recognize a “legal research lawyer specialist” for each major area of law, part of whose stock-in-trade would be knowledge of such frequently used, evidence-producing technologies. Such innovation is now necessary so as to make available to all lawyers such knowledge in aid of preparing competent cross-examinations and arguments with which to challenge the reliability of such frequently used sources of evidence, and to argue how the rules of procedure that control proceedings concerning, discovery, disclosure, and admissibility, must be applied flexibly so as to be compatible with constitutional requirements as to "fair trial," and, "an opportunity to make full answer and defense. But, because few law firms would have sufficient volume of production to be able to employ such highly specialized lawyers, they would have to be made available to other lawyers in support services operating at cost. However, law societies have no history of doing either creating specialist legal research lawyers, or support services.

Industrial robots have been increasingly used for decades and the International Federation of Robotics predicts that 1.3 million more of such humanoids will be installed in factories across the globe between 2015 and 2018. While robots are deemed beneficial for industrial production, they pose a serious threat to our health and safety. Meanwhile, robots have killed many people and gravely injured numerous others in different countries. Policymakers around the world remain largely unmoved about resolving the uncertainty over the specificity of which persons should go on trial for such killings. This article examines the principles of common law governing manslaughter by criminal negligence with particular reference to Australia; however, it will generally apply to other common law countries as well. It finds that while it would be theoretically possible to identify the potential accused of workplace deaths caused by robots, we consider that the common law identification doctrine in practice will be a bar to successful prosecutions against corporate employers given the specific complexities associated with the usage of industrial robots. This article therefore submits a recommendation with justifications for dealing with this serious offence by enacting appropriate manslaughter law for the effective regulation of robots provoked fatalities.

Agnotology is the study of ignorance —how it is culturally created or condoned, and the purposes it serves in a society. Stanford University professor Robert N. Proctor, a historian of science and technology, coined the word from the Greek agnosis, “not knowing,” and -ology, a subject of study or a branch of knowledge. The term first appeared in popular usage in 2003 in an article in the New York Times. “[A] great deal of attention has been given to epistemology (the study of how we know) when ‘how or why we don’t know’ is often just as important,” say Proctor and Londa Schiebinger in their seminal book Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. These authors have entered a target-rich territory, because the ways in which ignorance is created (agnogenesis) in our society are infinite—through media neglect and obfuscation, corporate or governmental secrecy and suppression, document destruction, myriad forms of cultural and political selectivity, inattention and forgetfulness, outright attempts to deceive and mislead (aka lying), and more. Proctor believes the study of ignorance has life-or-death consequences. This conviction stems from his role in the tobacco controversies in the waning years of the 20th century, in which he was a stern critic of the industry. “The tobacco industry is famous for having seen itself as a manufacturer of two different products, tobacco and doubt,” he asserts. The doubt refers to the tobacco companies' insistence that the science impugning tobacco was pie

In a typical scene from the 1960s retro television series Mad Men, a mother watches her children putting plastic bags from the drycleaners over their heads, chastising them... for messing up the clothes inside. This, as one critic notes, is one of those 'retrospective winks at past ignorance' that make Mad Men 'so funny and, at times, so chilling'.1 The joke is premised on a measurable national shift in knowledge about the dangers of allowing children to play with dry cleaning bags. Perceptions of risk both shape and are shaped by the criminal law. Risks that were unknown or underestimated at one time (for example, certain vehicular risks) now give rise to criminal liability.2 The criminal law reflects knowledge of risk and assessments of what risks are reasonable. At the same time, criminal sanctions communicate norms and educate the public about blameworthy risk-taking.

A mother from Calgary whose son died after she attempted to treat his strep throat at home with dandelion tea and oil of oregano has been sentenced to three years in prison for criminal negligence causing death. Tamara Lovett, 48, a believer in holistic medicine, did not call a doctor when her 7 year old son Ryan developed a throat infection, only calling an ambulance after two weeks of illness when she found him collapsed on the floor. He was pronounced …

Thus criminal justice tells us where the moral boundaries are, where the line lies between good and bad. It patrols those boundary lines, day and night, rain or shine. It shows the rules directly, dramatically, visually through asserting and enforcing them. (There are lessons from non-enforcement, too: from situations where the boundaries are indistinct, or the patrol corrupt or asleep; and society is quick to learn these lessons, too.) Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History White Collar Neglect American law provides federal and state prosecutors with powerful authority to charge individuals and corporations with crimes and to win, but they rarely pursue such cases. This paradox is especially poignant with respect to criminality that kills or injures workers or consumers, or that causes irretrievable damage to natural resources. Prosecutors have largely turned a blind eye to such violations, depending instead on a broken regulatory system to deter illegal behavior. To be sure, some of the criminal statutes that apply to health and safety offenses treat them lightly: purveyors of tainted food or grossly negligent employers face misdemeanor charges providing for prison terms of a year or less. Rather than working to develop cases that overcome these weaknesses by, for example, charging multiple violations that add up to significant jail time, prosecutors have largely abandoned those fields. One conundrum running throughout the field of neglected criminal enforcement is whether to charge corporations or their employees. The decision is admittedly complex, but forgoing enforcement altogether should not be a third and favored option. As a matter of principle, corporations should be subject to prosecution when the violations were endemic to the corporate structure, as opposed to the brainchild of isolated, rogue employees. Individuals can and should be charged alongside their corporate employers, providing a different kind of deterrent to future malfeasance.

Criminal enforcement of environmental laws has evolved rapidly in the past few years. Recent environmental prosecutions have targeted subtle conduct in innovative and aggressive ways by using expansive theories of liability beyond those contained in environmental statutes. Prosecutions for criminal negligence also are becoming more common. Because of aggressive federal and state efforts targeting environmental crimes, it is time for companies to take a hard look at their corporate policies and environmental compliance records to help ensure that they do not become a target of a criminal prosecution. This paper will review recent criminal environmental cases and discuss ways in which companies can best protect themselves and prepare for an environmental criminal investigation of their companies, officers, and employees.

This article addresses the contention of some prominent criminal law scholars – notably Jerome Hall and Glanville Williams – that negligence is an improper basis for the imposition of criminal punishment. An Aristotelian, virtue-ethics theory of punishment treats the inculcation of sound practical judgment as a function of punishment. The assessment of reasonable conduct implicit in negligence as a criterion of criminal fault fits comfortably within such a theory.

In our opinion German gynaecology has failed to adequately face what came to pass during the Nazi period. This can be proved objectively, for there is no evidence that, after 1945, gynaecology had in any way cared to take notice--either thermatically or medically--of the thousands of victims of inhuman practices such as forced termination of pregnancy, compulsory sterilisation and the like. During the past 50 years recollections of enforced sterilisations, compulsory abortions, deliberate and hence criminal negligence and problematic approaches in research and teaching were almost completely banished from the area of conscious awareness and largely suppressed or silently ignored. Most of the medical directors of Departments of Gynaecology of German universities shared this view whenever they were questioned on the connections between gynaecology and Nazism. Now that two generations have passed it seems possible to examine and explore with less guilt feelings and shame the immensely fateful role of gynaecology in that context. Accent should be on the fate of the victims of that period. To bring back these events to memory, however, does not permit to conceal the part played by the physicians committing of these inhuman Nazi crimes. Data collected from a psychosomatically oriented examination of victims exemplify that to concretely recall gynaecology during Nazism a1-so offers a chance in several respects. One of the possibilities in this context is to signal "late apology" and regret to patients who had been victims, in one's own area of work, after one has psychically worked over their fate. Besides, a gynaecological-psychosomatic expertise will help e.g. that compulsorily sterilised women are granted financial aid that has at long last become a legal possibility and can be applied for since 1980. However, the relevant patient records do show very clearly that the inhuman practice of gynaecology during the so-called "Third Reich" was not only a collective problem but equally due to a failure of the individual conscience of numerous gynaecologists. Working over this complex may enhance our own sensitivity for psychosomatic and ethic problems and counteract any likelihood of a recurrence of an inhuman gynaecology.

In Melbourne, 1880, fourteen-year-old Charlotte Duffy died of “hip disease” complicated by extreme neglect. Her parents were charged with criminal negligence. Matthew and Annie Duffy were both convicted, but Matthew Duffy's conviction was overturned on appeal, the court ruling that “in point of law” a father was not required to take any part in the day-to-day care of his children. This article uses the death of Charlotte Duffy as a focal point for an analysis of the gendered category of father in late-nineteenth-century Victoria, arguing that despite the clear delineation of male and female parenting in official discourse, the increasing strength of the ideal of conjugal masculinity was expanding the definition of fatherhood within the middle class. By the end of the nineteenth century, fatherhood implied a more intimate involvement with children than before: a new conception that worked to both extend and restrict the privileges of masculinity.

Bhopal, the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh in India, is known throughout the world for the huge disaster, affecting millions of people, that occurred at a Union Carbide pesticide plant on the night of December 3, 1984. The union Carbide Corporation technical team reports that a large volume of water was introduced into the Methyl Isocyanate tank and triggered a reaction (MIC) that resulted in the gas release (Lapierre & Moro, 1997).

Smoking is a paediatric disease that usually takes decades to claim its victims. Yet the promotion of cigarettes—particularly American cigarettes in Poland—can kill young people instantly. In the first six months of 1997, five sales representatives at Philip Morris Poland were killed and another critically injured in three separate accidents involving company cars. At first glance it seems that one of the world’s most aggressive marketing programmes and some of the world’s deadliest roads are simply a combination destined to produce repeated tragedies. But a closer look reveals that, in the third and most horrific accident, the company’s gross and perhaps criminal negligence greatly increased the risk to its young employees. This Philip Morris vehicle, photographed on a company lot near Warsaw in February 1998, may be an example of the wreckage (and carnage) resulting from high-speed tobacco marketing in Poland. (Photo credit: P Wrabec.) Let’s say you’re a marketing manager at the world’s leading transnational tobacco company, and you’re working in one of those backward little post-communist countries—for example, Poland. Your flagship brand, despite your best efforts and relentless promotional campaigning, just isn’t as popular among Polish youth as you would like it to be. What do you do? Even more promotions? Sure, the gadgets, contests, and cigarette giveaways must continue. (Never mind that you promised four years ago back home in the United States to stop handing out free samples. Poland ain’t home, is it? Home is now a tobacco war zone. Poland, God love it, is one of the new Promised Lands.) But these promotional tools are standard. You need something more, something with a little zip, a little flare. Something to make heads turn—especially heads that are young and impressionable. Got it! You know those trick matches that you …

The simple fact is that few conscious actions are taken without a specific purpose. If one raises a hand it may be in greeting, in salute, or perhaps to shade one’s eyes. Almost always there is a purpose. To go to war — a war in which countless lives will be lost and on which may depend the future of a nation, or the freedom and lifestyle of its people — without a clear and attainable objective, would be criminal negligence or sheer folly. In either case it is unforgivable. And yet, the world has witnessed such political ineptitude or irresponsibility on more than one occasion. One might judge the entry of America and its allies into the Vietnam conflict to be such a case. Although, to be fair, the domino theory was in vogue in the early 1960s and the western strategy was the containment of communist expansion. The fundamental error was the failure of the president, the commander in chief, to articulate a clear, unambiguous and attainable political aim/objective. Instead, what the president declared to the world at large was that the United States was not seeking to win the war but simply to preserve the independence of South Vietnam. The objective was at best unclear and, with the operating constraints imposed by politicians ignorant of the principles of war, unattainable. Unattainable without a continuing bleeding of the nations involved. The world’s most powerful nation adopted a defensive posture. Perhaps it would have been useful to reflect on the writing of Sun Tzu: ‘Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.’ There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.’1

THE BHOPAL DISTRICT COURT of India has ruled that seven former officials of Union Carbide India are guilty of criminal negligence in the chemical leak disaster that killed thousands in December 1984. The court sentenced them to two years in prison, the maximum allowed. The ruling, by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P. Tiwari, concerns a criminal case filed in 1987 by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, the country’s equivalent of the FBI. In the course of the 23-year case, India failed to secure the extradition of Warren Anderson, the now-89-year-old former chairman of Union Carbide, who is described as an “absconder” from justice in the ruling. Over the years, the hot-button case has passed from one judge to another more than a dozen times. Those sentenced include Union Carbide India’s then-chairman, Keshub Mahindra, and six other former senior officials. They all posted bail and have 30 days to file an appeal. In his 95-page ruling, ...

Merry states that ‘in practice the distinction between gross negligence and recklessness may be very subtle’.1 I wonder if his discussion of both the law and the relevant medical errors is outdated. Recklessness in English criminal law is advertent, and as Merry states, requires the conscious choice to take an unjustified risk. Criminal negligence is variously defined, but is usually regarded as not requiring advertence. One textbook definition is ‘… the inadvertent taking of an unjustifiable risk’.2 Historically, confusion has arisen from gross negligence manslaughter being sometimes known as reckless manslaughter. This should no longer be the case. The current leading cases, which Merry does not cite, are Adomako3 and Misra.4 Following these cases, a conviction for gross negligence manslaughter requires the existence of a duty of care, breach of that duty resulting in death and a risk of death which would be obvious to a reasonable prudent person. Additionally, the defendant's conduct must have fallen so far below the standard of a reasonable practitioner as to be grossly negligent in the view of the jury, and thereby warranting a criminal conviction for manslaughter. Although there is overlap, reckless manslaughter has a distinctly different meaning. Similarly, Merry's discussion of intrathecal vincristine administration would be enhanced by discussion of the incident at Nottingham in 2001. A junior doctor was prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter, and pleaded guilty. However, an external inquiry identified over 50 other contributory factors to the fatal event.5 I hope this additional material may prove interesting and informative to JRSM readers.

The increased usage and sophistication of computers applied to real time safety-related systems in the United Kingdom has spurred on the desire to provide a standard framework within which to design, build, and assess dependable computing systems. The recent introduction of the European Product Liability Laws has acted as a catalyst in this area.

In November 1906, Richard Pearson Strong, then head of the Philippine Biological Laboratory, inoculated 24 men--inmates of Manila's Bilibid Prison--with a cholera vaccine that somehow had been contaminated with plague organisms; 13 men died. The governor-general of the Philippines appointed a general committee to investigate the affair, and the U.S. Senate demanded information about the episode. Although the Senate, the secretary of war, and even the president were kept informed of developments, no mainland investigations ensued. The general committee concluded that Strong was negligent for not having locks on his incubators and for leaving a visiting physician alone in the laboratory, where he might have mixed up the cholera and plague cultures on the fateful day. The committee's charge was referred to the attorney general, who found Strong innocent of criminal negligence, whereupon the governor-general exonerated Strong. Strong was despondent over Bilibid but recovered and developed a noteworthy career in American tropical medicine. In retrospect, the disaster at Bilibid presents an epitome of the problems surrounding the use of prisoner-subjects without authorization and without their voluntary consent. Far ahead of its time, the general committee recognized and condemned the shortcomings and urged reform, pleas the government ignored. The Bilibid episode remains, however, as a cautionary tale for those engaged in clinical research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and to relate to each other two topics: (a) the admissibility of ignorance and mistake of fact as defences against negligence in crime; and (b) the inadmissibility of ignorance and mistake of law as defences against criminal charges. I am in (a) not concerned at all with torts negligence, only with criminal offences (whether common law or statutory) which can be committed negligently, where negligence suffices for liability, as in the law of homicide. This produces an untidy classification of elements, one or other of which is needed to provide the required mens rea (the exception of strict liability offences is here ignored): intention ( = purpose or aim), knowledge (or belief), recklessness and negligence. It is untidy, because the last does not belong on the same list as the other three, each of which can appropriately be called a state of mind in what we might say to be a positive sense, for each of them includes some degree of awareness of and/or attitude to relevant facts. If negligence is to be called (partly) a state of mind, it is so in a very stretched and negative way: to be told that a person was not attending to, thinking of or noticing something that he should have been is to be given some information, of a negative sort, about his state of mind, but it tells us very little, for it eliminates only one of an unlimited range of states of mind (in the positive sense). His not attending, noticing, etc., is equally compatible with his daydreaming (not attending to or noticing anything) and with his concentrating hard on something else. If negligence requires inadvertence, as is commonly maintained, then there was a state of mind which the agent should have been in but was not; if, as I would argue, it does not require inadvertence, then there was a state of mind which the agent should have been in, and maybe he was not in it, maybe he was in it. (In the present state of English law most offences of criminal negligence do require inadvertence, the notable exceptions being traffic offences such as careless driving. On the other hand, the proposal in the Law Commission Working Paper, No. 31 (1970) would not require it; the definition runs, ‘a person is negligent if he fails to exercise such care, skill or foresight as a reasonable man in his situation would exercise’. However, that is only a proposal; at present advertent negligence is rare in criminal law, although common in torts.) On this view, the questions are (1) whether his performance fell below scratch, (2) what are to be the excusing conditions for such a performance, and (3) if the answer to (1) is yes, whether his performance was covered by the excusing conditions.

The ‘New Midwifery’, a form of community midwifery rooted in home birth and intensive prenatal and postnatal care, has attracted great controversy since its appearance in British Columbia in the early 1970s. On the one hand, this form of community midwifery has endured despite legal prohibition. Midwives derive an income from their practices, obtain necessary supplies and equipment, and are active in lobbying for recognition through the State. On the other hand, community midwifery is marginalized and illegal. Out-of-hospital births comprise less than one percent of births in British Columbia (and nationwide). Community midwives are excluded from the provincal Medical Services Plan and they lack hospital privileges if their clients are transferred to hospital. Community midwives are more likely than medical personnel to be tried for criminal negligence causing death and subject to prosecution under theMedical Practitioners Act of practicing medicine without a license.

It must be evident from these figures which have been briefly summarized that a considerable number of women in the last three years lost their lives in the counties of Maryland without satisfactory care before or during childbirth. These women are for the most part not the very young or the old in years, but in the majority of instances the lives that were lost were those of married women living in normal homes and frequently mothers of older children. In other words, they comprise a group that cannot be lost without great loss in many ways to their families and to the communities in which they lived. A surprisingly large percentage of the deaths resulted from premature births among women who had not been under medical advice. Careless and ignorant midwives were associated with these maternal deaths in only a small proportion of these cases. The impression we have received from this review of maternal deaths in the counties of Maryland is that they were due directly or indirectly to the ignorance or indifference of the people themselves. Help from physician or midwife was rarely called for until alarming and dangerous complications had arisen and the physician was obliged to take emergency measures under unfavorable conditions. The patients who were reported to have died in hospitals were almost without exception admitted extremely ill when there was but little that could be done to save them. The apparent acceptance on the part of families and the public of the many deaths in childbearing as a matter which cannot be changed, deserves serious consideration. For until this attitude is altered and it is recognized generally that when a woman is in competent hands early in her pregnancy the dangers of childbearing are greatly lessened, we shall continue to lose many lives unnecessarily. Certainly it is most desirable that those undertaking obstetric work should have adequate training and experience. This matter is receiving attention by many medical faculties. However, a review of the maternal deaths here presented shows that but few of them could have been saved by more skilled hands at the critical period in which the physician was first called. Already sepsis or toxemia or other complication was so far developed as to render the best treatment unavailing. We were not able to determine in our series how much of the delay in calling in a doctor was due to the desire to save money. This seems to have been a factor in a considerable number of instances. Certainly the usual fee in the counties for obstetric service is a moderate return for the value of this service. Moreover, it is a charge which can be anticipated and saved for, as is not true of sudden or unexpected illness. We are told, however, that the cost of illness cannot be defrayed out of the available income in the case of about one-third of the American homes and presumably this is true also of the cost of bearing children. When the dangers of procrastination are not understood, the doctor's services are dispensed with as long as possible. Obstetric service is provided free of all charge by private practitioners in many instances, greatly to the credit of the physician; but this is not fair to either doctor or patient who may not want to be a receiver of charity. In the rural sections there is no obstetric service available to the indigent such as is offered to the corresponding group in Baltimore through the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Hospital of the University of Maryland and other clinics. Hospital beds, free or at moderate cost, are provided in the county hospitals. There is still much unwillingness to make use of them for normal cases. If there were a general demand for such accommodation, the beds would prove far too few. It would seem then that there is need in each county for some organized plan by which obstetric service could be furnished at little or no cost to those families of very moderate means. From such families come most of our maternal deaths at present. It is hardly reasonable to expect a physician whose practice covers a large area to undertake gratis the care of widely separated normal obstetric cases. If the private physician is to continue to do this charity work, he should receive from the county or elsewhere an adequate financial return. It is the custom of a number of doctors in the counties to use midwives whom they know to be capable and clean in their obstetric practice among the poor. The midwife in Europe, as is well known, occupies a more important position than with us. There she delivers nearly all normal cases and calls upon the physician only when difficulties arise. Our midwives in Maryland are far below those in Europe in education and training. However, the older ones are dying out and the newer ones have had some instruction and have passed a qualifying examination. The standard among them would be greatly raised if a carefully selected number could be received in some of our county hospitals and given instruction and practical experience. This could be arranged with but little expense to the hospital. It is conceivable that a physician with an active obstetric practice might make use of three or four midwives resident in different communities covered by his practice for delivering normal cases under his supervision. It would be advisable that he make at least one complete physical examination and be ready to respond if unforeseen difficulties appeared. There are now public health nurses in every county who are willing to visit any indigent expectant mothers at the request of a physician, give them such prenatal instruction as the physician desires and report to him at regular intervals. In two counties prenatal clinics have been organized with the approval of the profession for the examination and advice of indigent expectant women. We have received monthly reports from one of those prenatal clinics. The patients are either referred by local physicians or are indigent women, found by the public health nurses, who had made no arrangement for their care before or during labor. Of some 50 of these cases at least 10 were suffering from conditions which probably would have resulted fatally except for the care received at the clinic. Thus far there have been no maternal deaths. Would it not be possible in each county for the physicians themselves, or if they desire it, with the assistance of an experienced obstetrician, to organize a similar clinic where indigent expectant mothers may be examined early in their pregnancy, receive prenatal advice, and be helped to make suitable arrangements for their labor? To such a clinic the local physician might care to refer certain of his own patients and examine them himself. Probably many midwives could be encouraged to send their patients to such a clinic for examination and prenatal advice. A regular prenatal clinic in a county could readily be made a useful teaching center for physicians and so of mutual advantage both to the patient and to the profession. It has been suggested that a wider use in the counties of maternity insurance would bring improvement to the conditions it is so desirable to remedy. It is to be feared, however, that the group it seems especially necessary to help, would not be willing, perhaps not able, to pay the necessary premiums. It is quite evident that the profession cannot be, and the public ought not to be, satisfied with the present state of affairs. Through some plan, such as the more frequent use of the county hospital, the use and supervision of selected midwives, the prenatal clinic, maternity insurance, or the employment of the public health nurses, the physician might be able to supply at less sacrifice of his own valuable time and at less financial cost to his patient of moderate means, satisfactory prenatal and natal care, both of which seem desirable from the study of the maternal deaths. The fundamental part of any plan, however, for better service, is the necessity of bringing home to each prospective father and mother in the State, and to every community, that not to attempt to furnish every expectant mother with at least a minimum of medical care during her waiting period and at the hour of labor, is little short of criminal negligence. It is recognized that excellent and early care of the expectant mother and skilled obstetric service will not save all women in childbearing, but it is confidently believed it would result each year in the salvage of one-third of the lives of mothers, and one-third of the potential infant lives now being lost before or shortly after birth. This is certainly a goal worth striving for.

Most readers of newspapers during the 1960s will remember how a faceless bureaucracy mismanaged the United States Army’s adoption of the M-16 rifle as standard issue. They will remember how defective ammunition for the M-16 cost American lives in Vietnam, and how in the end a Congressional investigation concluded that the failure on the part of officials with authority in the Army to cause action to be taken to correct the deficiencies of the 5.56-mm. ammunition borders on criminal negligence.

In these latter days of widespread knowledge of aseptic measures for shielding the parturient woman from harm, the occurrence of puerperal sepsis is looked upon, even by the laity, as evidence that some one has blundered, and the attendant is fortunate if he escapes the charge of criminal negligence or inexcusable ignorance. If the infection of the lying-in woman happened only during labor, or her subsequent stay in childbed, the charge might be sustained with justice, but we are convinced that it happens more frequently than is apprehended that an infection has antedated childbed by weeks or months, if indeed it has not preceded conception itself and invaded territory absolutely beyond the reach of any possible antiseptic treatment. With a unilateral pyosalpinx, or a tubal infection, existing before pregnancy, or a subsequent gonorrheal infection of vulvo-vaginal glands or urethra, who can be certain, even though forewarned, that he can be

The present study is a critical approach to the Canada Law Reform Commission document concerning homicide. This study deals with two particular aspects of the law of homicide. In the first chapter we suggest the creation of a special category of homicide, the « homicide passionnel », for the following reasons : first of all the substantive defences, like intoxication, self-defence, diminished responsibility and provocation are too narrow. Especially with provocation, the application of the objective test is detrimental to the more vulnerable population which lacks educational and financial resources. Secondly, we cannot compare the robber who kills by using his weapon with the person who kills in a state of excitement, jealousy or anger. Besides, many foreign laws have recognized this category of « hot-blood » homicide. So, we think that is time for Canada to abolish the defence of provocation (s. 215 Cr. C.) and create this specific offence. In the second chapter, we suggest criminalization of homicide by negligence. Actually, we can see the difficulty judges have in convicting someone for criminal negligence when the death of a person is due to trafic « accident ». Many foreign criminal codes have created this offence. We find it fair to impose the duty of the reasonable person on those who take certain risks by using motor vehicles or other machines for their benefit or spare time.

The basic principles of order and efficiency-everybody doing his job and not intruding on others-while devised by Plato for his ideal republic, have been applied in practice to modern systems of industrial production. As this system reached its entelechy in Ford's assembly line, it is not surprising that the United States, where this perfection of the system was accomplished first, has been profoundly impressed by the principles of order and efficiency. It would mean belabouring the obvious to elaborate on the application of these principles to modern factories in the United States-or the rest of the industrialized world, for that matter. It is also well known that American agriculture benefited enormously by mechanization and rationalization, even if the spirit of industrial production had to be modified in its adaptation to this field of economic endeavour. The marketing of products has been dominated by the principles of efficiency and organization as well, as the supermarkets and the mail-order stores testify. Transportation and communication, roads and telephones, and countless other avenues of economic and administrative activity follow the same dictates. Life in America-from Ford's assembly line to the Yellow Pages, a veritable index to gracious living-is dominated by the spirit and letter of efficient organization. And the wages of this creed is affluence: efficiency-combined with natural resources, to be sure-made America into the richest country in the world. Occasionally there are gaps in this system. It is easier to buy tinned food than get rid of the empty tins in some parts of the country where the garbage disposal system is less than perfect. Railway services are not as reliable as in Europe and it is by no means unusual for trains to arrive much later than scheduled. The unprotected railway crossings, to quote a case of accepted criminal negligence, considerably contribute to the slaughter on the roads. Yet, these and such examples do not essentially change the overall picture. They rather stand out as curiosities against the background of an ordered, efficient, extremely wellfunctioning society which makes the life of the individual easy and comfortable, besides providing him with material wealth.

From a point of pertinent interest I deem it somewhat less than an impertinence to consider this subject, which within the last fourteen months has served to create disturbances of varied degree over different sections of Indiana. The fact of some chicken-pox cases being present in this city, the mildness of some cases not requiring a physician until several members of a family were attacked, snap diagnosis from incomplete observation, and last but not least the ignorance and criminal negligence of some of the physicians in denying the existence of the disease as smallpox, has, with the refusal of the authorities to build a pest-house, notwithstanding the demands of the secretary of the Board of Health, W. T. Fairfield, served to keep up a desultory outcropping of cases in different parts of the city, until up to April 15 there had been reported and discovered 149 cases since the beginning