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...declined public comment, is being sued for civil-rights violations in federal court by Miller and Buchanek. Blackburn says the innocence team is combing Texas public records to assess Pikett's impact on other cases. In the meantime, the Innocence Project of Texas study is being supported by canine-law-enforcement experts who, while not going so far as to call dog-scent evidence junk, fear that misapplication of the undisputed canine talent for recognizing smells will discredit good cases along with the bad. (See pictures of a real-life hotel for dogs...
Dogs have proved their value to both the military and law enforcement, Hess says, detecting explosives, working with narcotics officers and locating missing persons and bodies. But the alleged misuse of dog-scent evidence could cast a shadow over its value to law enforcement. In the 1980s, polygraph tests came into fashion and were hailed as an important forensic tool, but their misuse and overuse prompted a negative public reaction; Mesloh fears the same could befall the use of scent evidence. "The hammer fell on polygraphy, and it never really recovered," Mesloh says. "Now, [for dog scent], the blood...
...House of Lords, Britain's highest court, delivered a landmark ruling on July 30 when it said that the nation's assisted-suicide law must be clarified to spell out the circumstances under which authorities will prosecute someone who helps another person end their life...
According to Britain's Suicide Act of 1961, "a person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another" faces up to 14 years in prison. To get around the law, more than 100 British citizens have traveled to Switzerland to end their lives at Dignitas, an assisted-suicide clinic in Forch, near Zurich. But so far, no one who has accompanied a person to Dignitas has faced prosecution after returning to the U.K. The vagueness of the law pushed Debbie Purdy, a British woman suffering from multiple sclerosis who plans to end her life at the clinic...
Purdy, who has been confined to a wheelchair since 2001, argued that the lack of clarity in the law could force her to end her life sooner than she would like. She said that if she were to wait to end her life until she was completely dependent on her husband, she would be placing him at risk of imprisonment - meaning the only option left to her would be to travel to Dignitas alone, before her illness progressed that far. (Read "One-Way Ticket...