Does autonomous moral reasoning favor consequentialism?

This paper addresses an important issue that has been commonly debated in moral psychology, namely the normative and metaethical implications of our differing intuitive responses to morally indistinguishable dilemmas. The prominent example of the asymmetry in our responses is that people often intuitively accept pulling a switch and deny pushing as a morally permissible way of sacrificing an innocent person to save more innocent people. Joshua Greene traces our negative responses to actions involving “up close and personal” harm back to our evolutionary past and argues that this undermines the normative power of deontological judgments. I reject Greene’s argument by arguing that our theoretical moral intuitions, as opposed to concrete and mid-level ones, are independent of direct evolutionary influence because they are the product of autonomous (gene-independent) moral reasoning. I then explain how both consequentialist and deontological theoretical intuitions, which enable us to make important moral distinctions and grasp objective moral facts, are produced by the exercise of autonomous moral reasoning and the process of cultural evolution. My conclusion will be that Greene is not justified in his claim that deontology is normatively inferior to consequentialism.

The “Magnificent Seven Errors” in Forensic Autopsy Practice: The Italian Context

According to the Italian legal system, forensic autopsies are performed by a medical doctor specialized in legal medicine, otherwise known as a medicolegal expert (MLE), who has a range of very complex responsibilities. Indeed, the quality of forensic autopsy activity is always questioned in courts of law; incorrect assessments are dangerous because they can jeopardize the validity of a criminal investigation and thus affect the outcome so that a real culprit may be acquitted or an innocent person convicted. Nonconformities also discredit the professionalism of the specialist who performs the autopsy. The work of a MLE implies a series of assignments and duties that should be given constant consideration, but when certain aspects of this activity are underestimated or overlooked, this can lead the expert to make mistakes with irreparable consequences for the judicial investigation. In this article, for the first time, we present a summary of seven known errors related to autopsy activity following death by unnatural causes, with the purpose of alerting MLEs who work under the Italian judicial system to the potential dangers of such errors. These relate to: oversights in autopsy technique, incorrect collection of photographic and video material, unauthorized attendance at the autopsy, missing/mistaken reporting at any stage of the forensic activity, failure to notify the party forensic consultant, using histological or toxicological nonaccredited laboratories for forensic activities, and lack of observance of the chain of custody.

VOICE-BASED IDENTIFICATION AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE EFFICIENCY OF CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS

Today, forensic voice identification is a powerful tool in the fight against crime, in situations where it is necessary to identify a suspect or to acquit an innocent person. In this type of expertise, multidisciplinary approach is applied in which several scientific disciplines are included - linguistics, phonetics, acoustics, psychology, mathematical statistics, law and criminalistics. The perpetrator’s voice is characterized by pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced i.e., a series of individual characteristics that make each individual's voice, regardless of the variations expressed, suitable for identification. Some of these characteristics are natural features, determined by hereditary and physiological factors, and some are acquired habits. The aim of this paper is to present the most commonly used procedures and methods of analysis-assessment of voice and speech in order to identify persons as well as more modern approaches to the analysis of the speech signal.

Features of the Use of Computer-Technical Expertise in Order to Provide an Evidence Base in Criminal Proceedings

The process of investigating crimes committed with the use of modern information technologies is inherently connected with the need to attract specialists from expert organizations with special knowledge and qualifications. In order to form an evidence base in the criminal proceedings of the area under consideration and a comprehensive review of cases, the conclusion of a specialist conducting computer-technical expertise is significant. The scientifically based conclusions of the expert opinion allow us to fully restore the logical chain of circumstances and establish the mechanism of committing a crime, as well as to prove the fact of committing a criminal act, or to justify an innocent person in committing a crime. The relevance of the topic of the article is due to the growth of crimes with the use of modern information technologies. Based on the results of the theoretical analysis and study of judicial practice in criminal cases related to the use of information technologies, the authors consider the features of the investigation of cases and the significance of the results of expert opinions in sentencing. The features of the use of computer-technical expertise in order to provide an evidence base in criminal proceedings are determined.

The criminal responsibility for defamation of knowingly innocent

The scientific article analyzes the acute discussion in law enforcement practice and procedural science of the problem of the possibility of criminal prosecution of a suspect, accused of defaming a knowingly innocent person in the commission of a crime. The theoretical basis of the article are scientific works on criminal law and criminal procedural law (both domestic researchers and foreign experts). A set of general scientific, special scientific and philosophical methods of scientific knowledge has been used while preparing the scientific article, in particular dialectical, historical, comparative, dogmatic (formal-logical), system-structural analysis, modeling. It is substantiated in the article that the behavior of the suspect, accused, which is manifested in slandering of a knowingly innocent person, does not constitute the right to freedom from self-disclosure. It is also proved that both freedom from self-disclosure and the right to defense in criminal proceedings must have certain limits, in particular, it is rights and interests of other subjects protected by criminal law. We stated that the suspect or accused should be liable for misleading the court and pre-trial investigation bodies even if such deception was used to protect against the suspicion (or accusation), to avoid criminal liability.

Euripide, Ifigenia in Aulide

This volume contains the first Italian critical edition with introduction, translation and commentary of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis. The tragedy, exhibited posthumously in 405 BCE, stages the first mythical segment of the Trojan War, namely the sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of king Agamemnon, head of the Greek army, in order to propitiate the winds that should lead the navy to Troy. A tragedy of intrigue and unveiling, in which all the characters try to oppose the sacrifice, judged to be an impiety despite its sacred essence. It is therefore a tragedy without gods, in which characters of modest moral stature move, unstable, ready to sudden changes of mind, and among whom the protagonist stands out: the girl who, having overcome the dismay for the destiny awaiting her, voluntarily moves towards death on the altar, for a flimsy patriotic ideal and with the illusion of achieving immortal glory. Since the end of the eighteenth century, the text of this tragedy, handed over to us by the manuscript tradition, has been exposed more than others to a rigorous philological criticism that has broken its unity, through considerable expunctions of entire sections and sequences of verses. The volume traces the phases of this critical work, showing its methods – and sometimes its excesses – and choosing a balance line in the constitution of the text. The overall exegesis of the tragedy, which I propose in this study, consists in the belief that, despite the exodus being spurious, the finale, in view of which the entire dramaturgy was composed, still had to contemplate Iphigenia’s salvation. In fact, if the Panhellenic ideal of defence against the barbarians is now meaningless, and if a war of destruction, to begin with, needs the death of an innocent person, then this death must be transcended and the horror of human sacrifice must dissolve. It therefore seems that, once political current events become opaque, the poet’s research tends to create situations of great patheticism in an aesthetic setting of refined beauty.

Facts into faults: The grammar of guilt in jury deliberations

Jurors customarily do their work with very little by way of instruction from the court, other than about the law. This suggests that they enter the jury room with the relevant cognitive and interactional tools at the ready, drawn from everyday life. This paper focuses on a specific conversational device jurors use to do their work: conditional-contrastive inculpations (CCIs), whereby the defendant’s actions are compared unfavorably to what a normal, innocent person would have done, with the implication that the discrepancy indicates guilt. We examine the logic, variants, sequential precursors, and immediate consequences of this phenomenon in two real-life American criminal juries deliberating the same charges. This study offers a rare glimpse into the operation of real (rather than mock) juries, and specifically the way in which they appropriate a practice from ordinary conversation in order to perform the unordinary work demanded of them by the legal system.

Tito Dorčić as a Forerunner of the Ironic Mode

According to Northrop Frye, 20th-century literature is marked by characters whose intelligence and capabilities are lesser than those of the average human. Typical such figures are the protagonists of Kafka’s and Beckett’s works, who lack even the most basic information regarding their own position – due to which the reader has the sense of looking down on scenes of bondage, frustration or absurdity. Vjenceslav Novak’s Tito Dorčić, from the eponymous novel, is a forerunner of this type of character. He is trapped by his own predisposition and social environment and becomes unhappy in the "better life" imposed on him by his father. He is utterly unsuccessful in his career as well as in his family life. 20th-century interpreters found the cause of Tito’s state, or the source for such a character, in Darwinist theories supposedly praised by the novel’s author; a more recent critic emphasises the psychoanalytic motifs. Both theories unconsciously bear witness to the reduced power of the action of the protagonist. The novel’s final scene, in which Tito Dorčić’s left leg is stuck in a crevice whilst the upper part of his body immersed in the sea is a metaphor of his entire life. The scapegoat mechanism, as proposed by René Girard, also explains the events in Tito Dorčić’s life: the social crisis is seemingly only slightly present, yet Tito is depicted as a person holding a position in the judicial administration which, because of his low intelligence, immorality and lack of cultural refinement, he does not deserve. He commits mistakes in his prosecutor’s work and is punished because an innocent person has been hanged. Tito had previously been marked by the collapse of his marriage. Eventually, he loses his job, falls into madness, which might also be an act of selfpunishment, and at the end, he dies. The text, or the narrator, kills him, in the last step in the long procedure of attacking the protagonist.

Self-inflicted injuries: Three case reports

The means by which people self-harm are diverse and so are the motives that drive them. They are intended for personal gain which may be psychological, legal or material. Fabricated injuries may be self-inflicted or permitted by others. We present three cases of fabricated injuries over the shoulder and upper limbs both alleging assault with a firearm. In all the cases meticulous examination elicited suspicion on how these were caused. Meticulous examination is essential to differentiate true from false accusations so that no innocent person is punished.

Convicting the Innocent or Freeing the Guilty? Public Attitudes Toward Criminal Justice Errors

Two types of judicial errors—convicting an innocent person or acquitting a guilty person—challenge the integrity and legitimacy of criminal justice. How citizens view these errors plays an important role in criminal justice policy. Utilizing data from a national survey, this study applies the established Western theories to explore the correlates of public attitudes regarding the relative acceptance of wrongful convictions and erroneous acquittals in contemporary China. The findings lend support to both constructionist/conflict and symbolic theories.