North Carolina dangerously considers a confession to be sufficient evidence to sentence a person to death. The rate of error for confessions is far too high for this to be the case. According to a University of Virginia report released Aug. 21, nearly 20 percent of defendants who have been exonerated by DNA evidence had falsely confessed to the crime.
By Annie Galvin, who has written about music, theater, and books for the Washington City Paper and covered music and festivals for Slant Magazine. She is working on her Ph.D. in English at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.... As far as lightweight, easy-listening charts pop goes, V doesn’t totally offend the sensibilities, and that’s surely more than can be said about some of Maroon 5’s overly pandering, less exploratory “pop-rock” peers.
The world's smallest breathalyzer, about as big as a chapstick container, DrinkMate plugs into any Android phone and displays your BAC results instantly with no calibration, no mouthpiece and no battery. The idea with DrinkMate is to offer a cheap way to be responsible while still having fun at the bars with your friends. And yes, it sounds too good to be true, too.DrinkMate was created by University of Virginia alum Shaun Masavage, who I think it's safe to say, is a passionate tinkerer. Always intrigued by how products work, Masavage decided to look into the limits of breathalyzers an...
State leaders have hailed online education as the elixir for mushrooming college costs, but online courses have proven to be more expensive for most students than traditional classrooms in Texas, an analysis by The Dallas Morning News shows. Tuition for online classes can be more than 20 percent higher than regular classes at some universities, once extra fees or additional costs per credit hour are included, according to the News analysis.
The University of Virginia is urging its students to help prevent sexual assault.The university is launching a campaign titled “Hoos Got Your Back,” asking students to intervene in situations where they believe someone is at risk of being sexually assaulted.Students spearheading sexual assault awareness campaigns see it as a welcome cultural shift at the university, where the subject was seldom discussed just a few years ago.“The news just skyrocketed this summer about sexual assault,” said Sara Surface, a third-year student and member of the peer education group ...
A new policy from the University of Virginia's president is putting the responsibility on nearly every employee to report suspected sexual misconduct.
Kevin Spacey will be drawing in the usual suspects — an estimated 5,000 of them — for the University of Virginia’s second President’s Speaker Series for the Arts. Tickets will be available starting Wednesday.The Academy Award-winning actor will speak at 6 p.m. Oct. 18 at John Paul Jones Arena, where doors will open at 5 p.m. More than 5,000 people are expected to turn out to hear Spacey, a film and stage actor who also is a director, screenwriter and producer. UVa students, staff and faculty members and local community members all are welcome.
While not everyone loves Russian literature, an innovative program at the University of Virginia is taking these works to places they rarely see. "Books Behind Bars" is introducing young men behind bars to the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, led by U.Va. lecturer Andrew Kaufman. Featuring U.Va. students Kamala Ganesh and Jackie Cipolla. In a second segment, Doug Avila, a former juvenile behind bars, opens up about how the program changed his life.
"To have a solid self-defense theory, you either have to have already suffered an armed attack by the people you are targeting, or you have to think that they pose an imminent threat of armed attack," says Ashley Deeks, a former State Department lawyer who now teaches at the University of Virginia.
Although the subculture has been fueled by social media, it is not entirely a product of the 21st century. “Photography and testosterone have gone together for a very long time,” said John Edwin Mason, an associate history professor at the University of Virginia who studies the history of photography. Mason sees precedents for today’s daredevil photography subculture in the 19th-century exploration of the American West, when “you would find photographers going to extraordinary lengths to get their big heavy equipment over mountain tops and cliff faces.”
Dr. Marcus Martin and historian Kirt von Daacke are the co-chairs of the University of Virginia’s President’s Commission on Slavery and the University – an exciting and historic effort on the part of U.Va. to embrace the challenge of exploring, teaching and reflecting on the history of slavery at the University.
Surveying the tools available to the federal government to stimulate police reform, Rachel Harmon, a University of Virginia law professor wrote gloomily in the Saint Louis University Public Law Review: “Federal remedies for misconduct will never prevent bad policing much more than they do now.”
(Editorial) If this dispute was really about economic development, those answers should have been forthcoming. It’s easy to see why outside experts scoffed at Lindgren’s assurances that this is simply about the city’s exercising its right to protect industrial space. “The city’s stated reason is nonsense; no one is going to put an industrial operation in the basement of an office building. They would rather have the basement sit empty and unused than let Muslims in,’’ said Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia School of Law professor and leading au...
Gregory Houston Holt is an Arkansas prison inmate who is also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammad. According to his brief to the court, he feels his Muslim faith requires him to follow this dictate: “Allah’s Messenger said, ‘Cut the moustaches short and leave the beard (as it is).’ ” Holt said he is willing to compromise with prison officials and keep his beard trimmed to one-half inch. But Arkansas corrections officials allow beards only for dermatological conditions – not religious beliefs – and even then they must be trimmed to one-quarter inch. He is re...
"They have one training day a year, which is mostly spent drinking rather than drilling," University of Virginia historian Alan Taylor, author of two books that deal with the War of 1812, says of the militiamen. "Whoever was elected captain would take them down to the local tavern and they'd get blasted."
"There is little doubt that this is a politically charged affair," said Robert Fatton, a longtime Haiti expert and University of Virginia political science professor. "At a time when the Martelly administration is engaged in acrimonious negotiations with the opposition and the Senate over long overdue elections, the indictment is likely to polarize further an already tense situation."
In “Readings in Medieval Poetry,” University of Virginia English Professor AC Spearing describes the post-Romantic poet as “burdened with the obligation of an impossible originality.”
“Whatever the jury’s verdict, the trial itself has sent a powerful message to public officials, not just in Virginia but across the nation, that ethical lapses can have serious consequences,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.