Providentia

A New Look at Fuckology

A new article in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy reviews the book, Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money's Diagnostic Concepts by Lisa Downing, Iain Morland, and Nikki Sullivan (2014). The title of the volume is a rather clever coinage by Money himself, one of the few—and arguably the best—colloquialisms in the nearly endless series of clinical terms he devised during his long career. While a handful of his linguistic inventions became ubiquitous or at least adopted as specialist vernacular the lion’s share was hugely obscure. Perhaps what this collection of critical essays does best is paint a convincing portrait of the contradictions riddling Money's arguments. It also showcases him as a flawed, narcissistic scholar who bent over backward to avoid admitting his errors. Only here, the counterarguments linger a little too self-approvingly over postmodernist explanations of sex and gender instead of Money's "scientistic" conceptions. In a bizarre section in the concluding chapter, for instance, the authors embark on a three-page analytical nitpicking of the "unusual" iambic pentameters of Money’s definition of gender. All in all, however, Fuckology is a revealing look at a deliberately complex mind; it is an upper-level text that will help contemporary scholars understand Money in context.

For the abstract

Zambian President Calls for Prayer to Boost Currency

Hoping to improve Zambia's fading economy, President Edgar Lungu has called for national prayers and fasting to call on God to intervene.   In a press statement recently released from the Presidential palace, the recent devaluation of the kwacha, Zambia's national currency was described as just one of the many crises facing Zambians:

The President stated that the decision was inevitable in view of the many challenges that the country was faced with among them: socio-economic; disrespect for elders and a near absence of civility in discourse; high unemployment levels among the youth and high poverty levels, Kwacha depreciation including load shedding due to the power deficit.

Pastors from across the country are also publicly praying to boost the kwacha.  One of these pastors, Kautemba Phiri, was quoted as saying:  "Let us all get our kwacha notes and pray for this money so that it gains value. We should pray that the kwacha gains the much-needed strength against other convertible international currencies”

Over the past few months, the Zambian kwacha (which means "dawn" in local tribal dialects) has declined dramatically against the United States dollar and most other world currencies.   Bloomberg and other international news sources have rated the kwacha as being one of the weakest in the world.  The Zambian economy has weakened internationally due to the drop in demand for important exports such as copper as well as reduced demand for electricity for mining concerns.  Allegations of government financial mismanagement are adding to the country's woes

But not everyone in Zambia is taken with the idea of calling for supernatural help.   Baptist pastor Conrad Mbewe discussed his grave concerns about the public prayer in his blog: 

What bothered me was when I read that each pastor was asked to pull out a kwacha note from his pocket and raise it in the air during the prayer meeting. While other pastors were praying in tongues others were now prophesying that the currency should appreciate in three months.

Later, the kwacha notes were collected and taken to “the altar” where some senior pastors who were present continued to pray over the notes. Then the pastors collected their money again and continued to pray over the notes so that the money gains value....However, when educated people start confusing a piece of paper with a national economy that begins to worry me. What has gone wrong is not the piece of paper in our pockets. It is the national economy of Zambia that is sick. We cannot carry that in our pockets.

Other commenters were even more caustic.  One wrote, "Cry my beloved country! Problem in Zambia is most of the so called clergymen are just grades 7, 9 or 12 failures or school drop outs. And what do you expect from a bunch of failures who can’t see beyond their noses? You are asking too much from God you! Leave God out of this!"  

In the meantime, Zambia's economic woes are expected to continue with little real hope of improvement over the next few years.   How many Zambians will respond to this remains to be seen.

For more information

Why Do We Choose Suicide?

I'm going to be in Peru for the next week and I'm not sure about the kind of WiFi access I'll have down there so I likely won't be able to communicate much until I get back.

In the meantime, he is a brief piece I wrote about a remarkable TEDX video from two years ago.

 “I was barely a teenager the first time I tried to kill myself.  If I knew then what I know now, no, it probably wouldn’t have changed very much.   And it probably wouldn’t have changed very much because sometimes it doesn’t matter what you know.  What you feel takes over.”     

 It is with these simple words that Mark Henick began the talk he gave at the Fifth Annual TEDX conference  held in September 2013 at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music.  The talk, titled “Why We Choose Suicide” has had more than a million and a half page views since first being posted on YouTube and, listening to the 27-year-old Cape Breton native as he describes his battles with his own inner demons, it’s not hard to see why.  Now living in Toronto with his family, Mark Henrick works for the Ontario division of the Canadian Mental Health Association and is also on the board of Canada’s Mental Health Commission.    When not working with suicidal clients, he spends much of his time speaking professionally about mental health issues through the National Speakers Bureau.

 In describing his own suicide attempt as a teenager, he credits his survival to the intervention of a total stranger who talked him down from the overpass in his native town of Sydney, Nova Scotia as he was preparing to jump .  "I was alone,”  Henrick said.  “ I had planned this out already, I knew what I was going to do, and I had the emotional vulnerability at that time and [was] upset enough to actually try to follow through with it.”   Though an emergency crew was on the scene and a crowd had gathered (including one person who told him to jump),  it was the stranger who grabbed him once Mark let go of the railing.  “That was really the moment that I realized that I could be that person,” he said.  “ I could reach out and help people ... so that's what I do now."

 Judging from the comments to his video, many of them from people dealing with their own suicidal feelings,  Mark Henrick’s mission is far from over.   And he is well  aware of that.

To see the video, use the  link below.

 

Why Do the Lonely Stay Lonely?

All the lonely people.  Where do they all come from? All the lonely people.  Where do they all belong?   - Eleanor Rigby

What causes some people to be chronically lonely?  And why do lonely people often have difficulty in social situations? 

The need to belong is a fundamental need for all human beings and feeling connected can be an important predictor of emotional health.   Loneliness, on the other hand, stems from the perceived difference between the social lives we actually have and the kind of social life we often feel we should have.  More often than not, we feel especially lonely when we compared our current lives against some ideal that we've set for ourselves.   This ideal can involve comparing ourselves to people we know or to the kind of social ideal that can come from the fictional people we see in movies or television.  We all feel lonely at some point in our lives though the feelings are usually temporary.

Not surprisingly, chronic loneliness can be linked to a wide range of emotional problems such as low self-esteem, depression, and an increased risk for suicide.     For people who have a long history of loneliness and who don't have the sort of social support that comes from the friends and family accumulated over a lifetime, the long-term consequences can be even more severe.  Survival studies even suggest that chronic loneliness can lead to increased risk of all-cause mortality.  

All of which leads to the fundamental question of why loneliness can persist over time in some individuals.  

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

 

Are Medical Marijuana Laws Working?

A new paper in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management sheds light on previous inconsistencies identified in the literature regarding the relationship between medical marijuana laws (MMLs) and recreational marijuana use by closely examining the importance of policy dimensions (registration requirements, home cultivation, dispensaries) and the timing of when particular policy dimensions are enacted. Using data from the legal analysis of state MMLs, researchers evaluated which features are associated with adult and youth recreational and heavy use by linking these policy variables to data from the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97).  They employed differences‐in‐differences techniques, controlling for state and year fixed effects, allowing them to exploit within‐state policy changes. Results showed that while simple dichotomous indicators of MML laws are not positively associated with marijuana use or abuse, such measures hide the positive influence legal dispensaries have on adult and youth use, particularly heavy use. Sensitivity analyses that help address issues of policy endogeneity and actual implementation of dispensaries support our main conclusion that not all MML laws are the same. Dimensions of these policies, in particular legal protection of dispensaries, can lead to greater recreational marijuana use and abuse among adults and those under the legal age of 21 relative to MMLs without this supply source.

For the abstract

Can Weight Loss Surgery Increase the Risk of Suicide?

For people who are morbidly obese or who have health problems due to being overweight, weight loss or bariatric surgery can be a highly effective way of losing weight and improving health.  But can it lead to a higher risk of suicide in some patients?

Typically involving reducing the size of the stomach using gastric bands or removing and/or resectioning parts of the stomach and small intestine, weight loss surgery has an extremely high success rate with many patients reporting losing sixty percent or more of body weight within three years of the  procedure .   The U.S. National Institutes of Health recommends weight loss surgery for patients with a body mass index of 35 or greater if they also have health problems linked to weight such as Type 2 diabetes or obstructive sleep apnea.  

Here in Canada, weight loss surgery is becoming extremely common with more than six thousand operations being performed between 2013 and 2014, a sharp rise from the 1,600 conducted in 2006.  Despite the medical benefits associated with weight loss surgery, a new research study suggests that the psychological costs for people who have the surgery but fail to lose the hoped-for weight can be far higher than has been previously realized.   Conducted by a team of researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) located in Toronto, Ontario, the study followed more than eight thousand adults who underwent bariatric surgery between 2006 and 2011 to measure risk of suicide or self-harm attempts.   

According to their results, which have just been published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association-Surgery, one hundred and eleven patients had one hundred and fifty-eight self-harm emergencies during the three-year period follow-up.   The most common form of self-harm was intentionally overdosing on medication with half of all attempts leading to hospitalization.   Patients most likely to harm themselves following unsuccessful weight loss including those over age 35, have preexisting mental health issues,  have low incomes, or  who live in a rural area.

"Bariatric surgery in many cases is an extremely successful operation," said principal researcher Dr. Donald Redelmeier, an internal medicine specialist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in an interview with CTV News.  "The average patient loses a lot of weight and some patients even get their diabetes cured."   He also states that weight loss surgery is often the last resort for many obese people and having it fail can be emotionally devastating. 

In discussing the depression that can often follow weight loss failure, Dr. Redeleier notes that  "It's a particular concern in that it doesn't show up immediately.  For the first couple of months after the surgery, there's no increase whatsoever. It mostly begins to appear in the second and third year.  And that's where we think there's a need for much greater followup, It's after the first year ... often the psychologists and the social workers have moved their interest onto other cases. That's when there seems to be some missed opportunities for intervention."

 

Prophet and Loss

On April 13, 2000, Lionel "Leo" Volpe died at Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point, New Jersey.   The exact cause of death wasn't given though the 83-year old Volpe had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 1992.   What made this story+ so remarkable wasn't the exact circumstances of his death, but that he had been the head of one of the most unique religious groups in New Jersey's history.  For not only did Leo Volpe claim to be the Prophet Jeremiah returned to Earth, but that he was God's spokesman and founder of a church would preside over the last days of the human race.  

Leo Volpe wasn't always a prophet though.   Born in 1916, he worked as a mason before discovering the works of Joseph Franklin Rutherford in 1940.   Rutherford had been a leading figure in the Jehovah's Witnesses as well as the second president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.  Many of his books. including his three-volume book Vindication, advocated civil disobedience by following God's word over all earthly governments.   Inspired by Rutherford's teachings, Volpe became a conscientious objector during World War II and faced legal troubles over resisting the draft.   

After studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses for several years, he reportedly received his first message from Yahweh in 1943 telling him toleave Jehovah's Witnesses.  "Move to the country," the voice said.  "Stay there by yourself, and I will teach you all about Jehovah's Witnesses; and afterward you will get back together in a way that will surprise them."  Following the voice's instructions, Volpe moved to Vineland, New Jersey where he studied scripture in detail as he attempted to unravel the meaning behind various Biblical passages.

Finally, after forty years of study,  Volpe founded the The Restored Israel of Yahweh in 1973.    In founding his church, which he said "is not Christian though we believe in Christ,"   Yahweh was meant to describe all those who sought salvation in the coming destruction Volpe predicted.   Among the revelations that Volpe provided to his small, but growing group of followers, was that he was the prophet Jeremiah returned to Earth.    As he later proclaimed, "I am God's spokesman.  If these were my own ideas, I would not utter a word.  But being inspired, having this fabulous knowledge revealed to me,  I must speak.  I was told to lead his people." 

Volpe also revealed that the King of Iron (the Soviet Union) and the the King of Clay (the United States) would eventually create a one-world government with the Pope of Rome as its ruler.  This government would only last for a few years before humanity destroyed itself.   "I have only a message of gloom for the world, of its utter destruction," Volpe said in a 1975 newspaper interview.  "There's no hope for it at all." 

Using a ten-year chronology that he had carefully worked out during his long years after leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses, he predicted that the movement he founded would swell to more than 200 million followers as several other returned prophets joined him in redeeming the world.   At that time, he only had one hundred and fifty followers, most of whom were young people living in New Jersey.   Many of them had dropped out of college to serve the new movement, something that Volpe heartily endorsed. He also encouraged followers to home-school their children to prevent them from being indoctrinated in immoral beliefs. 

"If they go on going to college and don't get this information, they'll all be dead at the beginning of the new government," he warned.   Adding that only a third of the Earth's population would see the truth before the end and escape by fleeing to the mountains, he insisted that the rest of the world would be destroyed in war.   After his prophecy came to pass though, the survivors would draw on his teachings to build a perfect society.   "There will be no more death.  All the righteous will make up the most efficient system ever seen on Earth.  All will be producers.  Everything will go into storehouses and be free.  There will be no more money, no more armies, banks, or courts.  All physical ailments gradually will be erased."

Despite their leader's enthusiasm, not to mention the pickets they set up on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and various other prominent spots around New Jersey, the movement never really grew.    The 150 followers had in the 1970s seemed to have been the high point and their numbers dwindled to fewer than fifty by the 1990s.    What drove many of his followers away over the years was Volpe's unfortunate tendency to make predictions about the End Times that failed to come to pass. 

The first prediction was that the world would end in 1969 with God destroying all governments and establishing a new kingdom with Volpe and other returned prophets as leaders.   When that particular prediction failed, Volpe said that he had another vision in which God told him to build a kingdom on Earth.    With support from his followers, Volpe purchased a large chunk of real estate in New Jersey's Hamilton township.   In addition to various business, Volpe's followers also built houses where they could live rent-free.

Along with the problems of running a 250-acre community over which he was absolute ruler, Leo  Volpe also faced considerable legal woes as well.   After decades of refusing to pay federal income taxes, he finally served four months in jail for tax evasion.   Not that this made him any less determined in his mission.  After years of relative calm, he made a new prediction of the world ending in 1985 and had his followers prepare for the end of the world (again).   This prediction failed as well which cost him even more members.

One of those lost members happened to be Volpe's own son, Dan.   Not long after Dan began questioning his father's teachings, he found himself ostracized, much like many other followers who dared to question the Prophet.   Even after Leo Volpe's health led to his hospitalization, his other followers made it clear to Dan that he wasn't welcome at the hospital.  As Dan himself later reported, "When he was sent home, the group sent me a letter stating that they did not want me to visit.  After many years of conflict, I finally gave up and let them have their way.  I learned of his death through former members two weeks after the fact."

With Volpe's death came the troublesome question of who would lead the few remaining members of a church that owned nearly a million dollars in real estate and financial assets.   Soon after Volpe died, his wife Esther signed an affidavit verifying that her husband had no assets.   Instead, ownership of the various properties was listed as "Yahshua Mawsheeach, the king of the Restored Israel of Yahweh, Yahweh's only begotten son, now and forever reigning from the heavens, represented on Earth by Leo J. Volpe, the resurrected prophet Jeremiah, Yahshua Mawsheeach's supreme earthly representative."  Much of the other property was deeded to Esther Volpe.

While the Restored Israel of Yahweh still exists (or at least their website does), I haven't been able to find news stories about their more recent activities.   Back in 2005, several members were convicted for tax evasion but there is little else since then.   Whoever is running the group, which has been officially labeled a cult by federal authorities, it seems unlikely to survive much longer without Leo Volpe at the helm.  

That's one kind of doom their prophet failed to see coming.

 

 

The Hanged Man

Is it possible to bring a drowning victim back to life?

Given the numerous cases of drowning that occurred in 18th century London and the lack of any proper system of saving drowing victims at that time,  the need for a new organization to teach resuscitation techniques seemed desperately needed.    Inspired by a rescue organization in the Netherlands that had been founded years earlier, Dr. William Hawes  and another physician, Thomas Cogan, founded the Royal Humane Society in 1774 to promote training in first aid and artificial respiration for drowning victims.   To advertise the potential benefits of artificial respiration, Hawes and Cogan hit on a rather novel scheme.  They offered a cash reward to anyone who would bring them a drowning victim that had been taken from the water anywhere within thirty miles of London (Hawes paid the reward out of his own pocket).  The Royal Humane Society would later serve as a model for similar organizations around the world.

As part of their effort to improve existing medical techniques, Hawes and Cogan approached the famous surgeon, John Hunter,  for guidance.  A highly distinguished medical researcher and surgeon, Hunter was an obvious choice.    Being blunt and argumentative by nature, Hunter had no problem challenging existing views on when death occurred and was forthright in presenting the fledgling Humane Society (and later the Royal Society) with his own views on resuscitation.  

Doctor John Hunter was certainly the right man for the job.   A brilliant anatomist and researcher, his medical expertise was in constant demand.  Among Hunter's patients were Benjamin Franklin (who had consulted him for bladder problems) and Adam Smith (hemorrhoids).  Hunter's unorthodox methods made him the envy of all his fellow surgeons and his own outspoken manner earned him any number of enemies as well.   Among other things, he also became an authority on venereal disease and even went so far as to inoculate himself with tissue taken from a patient to test his theories.  Hunter contracted syphilis and gonorrhea as a result and, unfortunately, used his infection to argue that syphilis and gonorrhea were essentially the same disease (they aren't).  

Though the medical science surrounding resuscitation was still in its infancy,  Hunter's insights were certainly inspired.  He stressed that drowning victims should not automatically be assumed dead and that "only the suspension of the actions of life has taken place".    In treating the drowning victim, Hunter recommended aggressive measures including using a double bellows to force air into the drowning victim's lungs, applying stimulating vapours to the nose, keeping the body warm and a vigorous massage in essential oils.  When all else failed, Hunter advised the use of electrical stimulation to the heart.  He also argued that rescuscitation should be viewed scientifically with a notebook on hand so that the physician could carefully record what worked and what didn't in reviving the patient. 

To test his own resuscitation methods, John Hunter turned to a different source.  Through his years of dissecting executed criminals, Hunter knew that hangmen were often fairly sloppy with their workmanship on the gallows.   This was long before the invention of the "Marwood drop" which ensured that convicts died quickly and cleanly of a broken neck.   During Hunter's day,  convicts being executed were usually only given enough rope to slowly strangle to death as their oxygen was cut off.   Even then, death was not assured and there were cases of executed convicts waking up after being believed dead.     The notion that an executed criminal could be successfully revived appealed to Hunter and a famous case then working its way through the English courts provided him with the perfect opportunity.

The Reverend William Dodd was never your typical clergyman.  Ordained an Anglican priest in 1753, his flamboyant lifestyle and manner made him a popular figure in British society  and earned him the nickname of the "Macaroni Parson" (macaroni was a popular slang term for fashionable).  While being forced to leave England after disgracing himself by attempting to use bribery to gain a lucrative position for himself, Dodd returned to England after a short time abroad.  Unfortunately, Dodd's extravagant lifestyle and financial problems continued and he was later caught out in a scheme in which he attempted to defraud a wealthy former pupil of thousands of pounds to clear his own debts.  Since forgery and fraud were capital offenses in those days, Dodd was quickly arrested and went on trial for his life.    He confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death despite pleas for leniency from prominent figures such as Samuel Johnson.   There was a last-ditch appeal for a Royal Pardon (including a petition with 23,000 signatures) but Dodd went to the gallows on June 27, 1777.   

Since William Dodd had been an early supporter of the Humane Society, John Hunter was well aware of the details of the case.   As Dodd was being led up the gallows at Tyburn, Hunter and his Humane Society colleagues were waiting at an undertaker's establishment with all the tools needed for the revival.    While Hunter himself never wrote about his attempt at reviving Dodd, a fellow Royal Society member, Charles Hutton, later provided an account of what happened next.  Despite Hunter's attempts to get Dodd's body as soon after the execution as possible, the huge number of people in attendance made that impossible.  Because of the pressing crowds,  Dodd was left hanging for at least an hour before being taken down.  As well, the hearse took an additional forty minutes to deliver the body to the waiting Hunter.   Although Hunter and his colleagues were dismayed by the delays, they proceeded to work on Dodd's body with "all means possible for the reanimation".  Unfortunately, the attempt was a total failure and Hunter eventually admitted defeat.    Dodd's body was released for burial and that was the end of it.

Except...

For years after Dodd's execution, there was a lingering rumour that Hunter hadn't failed and that Dodd had been successfully revived.   The press recorded various "Dodd sightings" throughout the United Kingdom and stories of the "Macaroni Parson" cheating the gallows persisted.  As recently as 1794,  a Scottish newspaper reported that Dodd was living in Glasgow "happily beyond the reach of his enemies".

As for John Hunter, he moved on to other things.   Along with his legendary fame as a surgeon, he also amassed one of the most amazing collections of medical and natural history specimens in Europe (including the skeleton of the Irish giant, Charles Byrne) which he put on display in a custom-built teaching museum at his home in Leicester Square.   Following Hunter's death in 1793 (due to an angina attack likely linked to his syphilis-weakened heart), his collection of papers and specimens were purchased by the government and presented to the Company of Surgeons (now the Royal College of Surgeons).   Visitors to the Royal College of Surgeons at London's Lincoln's Inn Fields can still see Hunter's vast collection (as part of the College's even more extensive museums). 

It is quite an experience for those with a taste for the macabre.

Preventing Suicides

An article in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry discusses effective suicide prevention strategies. Deaths by suicide, the leading cause of non-accidental death among youth in Canada, outnumber all deaths by diseases of the heart, lungs, kidney, gastrointestinal system and cancer combined. Unquestionably, this is a serious threat to public health and to the human capital of our nation; however, effective strategies to address this menace have been elusive. The quest for efficacious initiatives is not only compelling, but is expected in a society that values the young and invests in its future. We need programs that are creative and appealing, yet, more importantly, that provide clear benefit and absence of harm.

For the abstract

New Bill Designating Mentally Ill Man as "High-Risk" Faces Court Challenge

Can a law be imposed retroactively?

Following Allan Schoenborn's murder of his three children in 2008,  a British Columbia Supreme Court eventually found him not criminally responsible for the killings.   Since that time, Canada's Conservative government has enacted tough new legislation designating such offenders as "High Risk Accused" with tightened restrictions over release into the community.    At the time that Bill C-14 was enacted, Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally announced the legislation at a press conference held along with the family of Schoenborn's victims, including his ex-wife Darcie Clark.    Now, a BC court is weighing whether Bill C-14 should apply to Allen Shoenborn, who has already been granted escorted passes into the community, despite his crimes occurring years before the bill was passed.

On April 6, 2008, Darcie Clark returned to her trailer home in Merritt, B.C. to find her three children - Kaitlynne, 10, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5, had been killed in their beds.  Clark had placed the children in their father's care despite her opposition to any attempt at reconciliation.   Clark found the bodies arranged as if they were asleep though Kaitlynne had been struck repeatedly with a cleaver and all three had been smothered.  The messages, "Forever Young", and "Gone to Neverland" had been scrawled in blood and soy sauce. 

After Schoenborn's arrest, he told police that he had killed his children because he believed them to be at risk for abuse.   Days before the killings, Schoenborn was arrested for an incident at his daughter's school in which he threatened a young girl who had upset his daughter.   While police attempted to hold him for a judicial review, a justice of the peace granted him bail.  The murders occurred shortly afterward.

Despite his volatile behaviour, including frequent outbursts during his trial, Allen Schoenborn was later found not criminally responsible and he was detained at a suburban Vancouver psychiatric hospital.  After a lengthy tribunal last winter, including psychiatric testimony, it was ruled that Schoenborn's rehabilitation plan be approved, including escorted passes into the community.   Given the high profile over his case, and the passage of Bill C-14, B.C. crown prosecutors initiated the process to have him declared a "high-risk accused" which would ensure that he remain in hospital indefinitely.  

According to psychologist and lawyer Patrick Baillie, prosecutors are attempting to apply the bill retroactively.  "He has been progressing through treatment, he has been compliant and an excellent example of what treatment is supposed to look like,"  Baillie said.  "And instead, the response from the prosecutor is to seek to have him yanked back inside with no passes."

Since a recent case in Quebec has already ruled that Bill C-14 cannot be applied retroactively,  B.C. prosecutors face an uphill battle to invoke it for Allan Schoenborn.  In the meantime, the current proceedings are likely to stir up painful memories of the 2008 murders as Schoenborn's fate is determined.

 For more information