"The Defendant Has Seemed to Live a Charmed Life": Hopt v. Utah: Territorial Justice, The Supreme Court of the United States, and Late Nineteenth-Century Death Penalty Jurisprudence

On March 7, 1887, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Fred Hopt's fourth appeal to that Court. The Utah Territory murderer's conviction had been reversed three times over seven years-his "charmed life"-but this time both his luck and his legal argument had run out: his fourth conviction was upheld. Justice Stephen J. Field dismissed Hopt's four major claims: that several members of the jury were improperly seated in spite of bias; that a doctor's evidence of cause of death was beyond the scope of his expertise; that the trial judge's "reasonable doubt" jury instruction was inadequate; and that the prosecutor's reference to the "many times the case had been before the courts" was prejudicial. Five months later, on August 11, Hopt was executed by a firing squad in the yard of the Utah Penitentiary. Hopt was only one of over two thousand convicted criminals, mostly murderers, who were legally executed in the United States in the two decades between 1880 and 1900. However, his defense team of court-appointed Salt Lake City lawyers had kept him alive for seven years. During that time he had four jury trials, four appeals to the Supreme Court of Utah Territory, and four appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States. He is the only death penalty litigant ever to be the subject of four full opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States.     

From foodways to intangible heritage: a case study of Chinese culinary resource,retail and recipe in Hong Kong

Chinese foodways is a complex mix of regional elements including a wide range of ingredients and culinary skills, and is considered a system of knowledge not only inherited from the past but also determined by socio-political changes in different eras. Even though great differences can be found between northern and southern ingredients and culinary skills, there are common characteristics shared among cuisines in various regions through internal migration as well as importation of ingredients and cooking skills. Apart from studying Chinese foodways as regional traditions in the historical context, we should look at it as intangible heritage from the socio-political perspectives regarding the current debate on cultural preservation. In this article, I aim to investigate Chinese foodways related to heritage preservation focusing on culinary resource in agricultural and cultivation system, wholesale/retail trade network and family recipe, in order to have a better understanding of food heritage in the fast-changing Hong Kong society. With the three cases provided, I would draw attention to the paradox of defining heritage for preservation and the dilemma of whether we should preserve traditional foodways that have been modified for market interest as they are discredited for loss of authenticity.     

An island-wide assessment of the chronology of settlement and land use on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) based on radiocarbon data

The archaeological landscape on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) contains a palimpsest of surface archaeological features reflecting a long history of settlement and land use. The popular narrative of societal collapse prior to European contact relies on chronometric data from the late pre-European contact period and also cites major settlement shifts as evidence for societal collapse and socio-political reorganization. This paper explores the archaeological evidence for proposed changes in settlement by assessing the spatial and temporal distribution of radiocarbon determinations collected from archaeological and landscape contexts. A corpus of over 300 determinations is placed into an island-wide GIS database and analysed. The results of this study suggest that Rapa Nui settlement and land use exhibit continuity rather than punctuated, detrimental change during the late pre-European contact period.     

Skilliostrobus gen. nov., a new lycopsid cone from the Early Triassic of Australia

Skilliostrobus australis gen. et sp. nov. is a large, ovoid, pedunculate cone present in rocks of Early Triassic age in three areas in southeastern Australia and Tasmania. The cone is heterosporous and its unisporangiate sporophylls are wedge-shaped with long horizontal limbs. Microsporophylls occur above megasporophylls in the cone and the sporangia are adaxial. Large trilete megaspores similar to the dispersed megaspore genus Horstisporites Potonié are present in the megasporangia of the cone and the microsporangia contain small monolete spores similar to the dispersed microspore genus Aratrisporites Leschik. Skilliostrobus is placed in the family Lepidodendraceae in the order Lepidodendrales. The size of the cone suggests that the parent plant was comparable in size with small arborescent Palaeozoic lycopsids and with some species of Pleuromeia. The discovery of this cone is another indication that arborescent lycopsids did not become extinct at the end of the Paleozoic.     

Reviews

Studies in Folk-Song-and Popular Poetry. By Alfred M. Williams, with a Prefatory Note by Edward Clodd. 8vo; pp. vi., 329. Elliot Stock, 1895.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Translated by C. H. S. Davies. Putnam Sons, New York. By Joseph Jacobs.

Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. First Series, IVth to XIIth Dynasty Edited Flinders Petrie, Hon. D.C.L. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. London, Methuen &; Co. 1895.

Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World collected from oral tradition in South-West Munster by Jeremiah Curtin. David Nutt, 1895.