Homicide charges require experienced and skillful criminal trial attorneys. Below are common sense factors that will help you determine if the lawyer you are considering hiring is an experienced homicide lawyer.

1. Has the lawyer had at least 20 criminal jury trials as lead counsel? During my over 25 years of experience, I have focused by legal practice on trying all sorts of homicide cases.  One of my homicide cases was featured on TRU TV.
2. How many jury trials has that lawyer won as a defense attorney?  This is a vital question to ask. I have done over 100 trials as a criminal defense attorney.  Also, remember not all trials are equal.  It is important distinguish between trials won as a defense attorney and trials won as a prosecutor. Prosecutors win most of their cases at trial because they pick the cases that proceed to trial and pick the cases that they settle. If a lawyer tells you that they are a former prosecutor and that they tried 20 jury trials and won all of them that is not that much of an accomplishment. Winning a trial as a defense lawyer is much more difficult than winning as a prosecutor.   I have won many of my homicide cases.  In one case involving a mentally retarded client, the prosecutor ended up offering my client a personal apology for charging him in court!
   
3. Also even good criminal trial attorneys often lose more than they win. If a criminal defense lawyer takes difficult cases to trial you have to expect that lawyer to lose more than they win.
   
4. Does the lawyer write serious motions or just file “canned” form motions? Ask to see some of the lawyers writings. Is the motion over 2 to 3 pages? Is the lawyer actually arguing the law and applying the law to the facts? Or is the lawyer just asking the judge to do something without any legal analysis? Serious lawyers write serious motions and serious briefs. Paul Ksicinski is particularly skilled in instituting complex litigation such as the first challenge to race based traffic stops in Milwaukee County; the first challenge to Milwaukee County In-Custody Intake procedure of shackling all criminal defendants; exposed racial origins of felon disenfranchisement by filing first Wisconsin Voter’s Right Act challenge to felon disenfranchisement and has challenged Wisconsin’s same sex marriage ban.
   
5. What steps has the lawyer taken to improve their trial abilities? Representing someone on a murder charge is a great responsibility. What steps has that lawyer taken to improve his or her skills as a trial lawyer? I have not only attended criminal law seminars specifically for homicide cases, I have taught classes on admission of evidence at trial.  In response to one of my published articles a person responded, "Paul Ksicinski diligently has his finger on the pulse of the nation....." You want an attorney who knows what people on the jury are thinking!
6. What kind of name does the lawyer have in the legal community?  Avvo has featured me as a criminal defense attorney. I received the Wisconsin Public Defender Performance Recognition Award that honored his “sustained outstanding performance” regarding client representation.  He was also awarded Certificate of Appreciation from Public Defender Office for “perseverance, leadership and attention to detail” so that the Office was “better prepared to argue issues in the area of identity, expert witnesses and motions in limine.”  Paul Ksicinski's other acts outline has been used by Professor Stephen P. Hurley at UW Madison Law School for his evidence class.  Paul Ksicinski was featured in Professor Berman’s Sentencing Law and Policy Blog on Apprendi’s bar to using a juvenile conviction as a predicate offense for a charge in the adult system.  Justice David T. Prosser referred to Paul Ksicinski's lawyering as “excellent” and “skillful.” Russell Stamper, former Judge in Milwaukee County, WI, has said about me, "I endorse this lawyer. He's smart, resourceful, creative, bold, a humanitarian with a strong social conscience in pursuit of justice through the legal system.” Katie, a former client said, “Given Paul's vast experience and wealth of knowledge, I highly recommend his excellent representation. 
   
7. I am used to high pressure homicide cases.  Take a look here to learn about one of cases with international headlines, Tracy Edwards, the man who led police to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
   

 
If you evaluate the lawyer you are considering hiring using the common sense factors listed above, you will know the only homicide defense attorney for you is Paul A. Ksicinski.

Free Case Review from a Criminal Defense Attorney
One of the most serious crimes a person can be accused of is homicide. The stakes are high and the penalties can include life imprisonment or worse. Now is the time to have the best possible legal defense.  Contact Paul Ksicinski at 414-530-5214 or pksicinski@gmail.com NOW!

In 2015, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Chuck Rosenberg admitted that marijuana was not as bad as heroin. Of course, in the same breath he also said that as head of the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration he was not an expert on drugs.  Still it was a beginning.

On Nov. 17, 2016 Drug Enforcement Administration Chuck Rosenberg finally admitted to the futility of drug prosecutions: “We are not gonna enforce or prosecute our way out” of America’s drug problem, specifically  prescription opioids which lead to heroin use.

Hopefully judges and legislators are listening.  America’s drug problem cannot be treated by an arrest.  According to a new report from the U.S. Surgeon General. “It’s time to change how we view addiction. Not as a moral failing but as a chronic illness that must be treated with skill, urgency and compassion,” says Dr. Vivek H. Murthy. Donald Trump’s solution — a wall to keep out drug criminals — misses the point.

Courts and legislators need to see that drug addiction is not a character flaw but an addiction explains the U.S. Surgeon General. Here are the Key Findings regarding Early Intervention, Treatment, and Management of Substance Use Disorders
 

• Well-supported scientific evidence shows that substance use disorders can be effectively treated, with recurrence rates no higher than those for other chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, and hypertension. With comprehensive continuing care, recovery is now an achievable outcome.
•  Only about 1 in 10 people with a substance use disorder receive any type of specialty treatment. The great majority of treatment has occurred in specialty substance use disorder treatment programs with little involvement by primary or general health care. However, a shift is occurring to mainstream the delivery of early intervention and treatment services into general health care practice.
•     Well-supported scientific evidence shows that medications can be effective in treating serious substance use disorders, but they are under-used. The U.S/ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three medications to treat alcohol use disorders and three others to treat opioid use disorders. However, an insufficient number of existing treatment programs or practicing physicians offer these medications. To date, no FDA-approved medications are available to treat marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, or other substance use disorders, with the exception of the medications previously noted for alcohol and opioid use disorders.
• Supported scientific evidence indicates that substance misuse and substance use disorders can be reliably and easily identified through screening and that less severe forms of these conditions often respond to brief physician advice and other types of brief interventions. Well-supported scientific evidence shows that these brief interventions work with mild severity alcohol use disorders, but only promising evidence suggests that they are effective with drug use disorders.
• Well-supported scientific evidence shows that treatment for substance use disorders—including inpatient, residential, and outpatient—are cost-effective compared with no treatment.
• The primary goals and general management methods of treatment for substance use disorders are the same as those for the treatment of other chronic illnesses. The goals of treatment are to reduce key symptoms to non-problematic levels and improve health and functional status; this is equally true for those with co-occurring substance use disorders and other psychiatric disorders. Key components of care are medications, behavioral therapies, and recovery support services (RSS).
• Well-supported scientific evidence shows that behavioral therapies can be effective in treating substance use disorders, but most evidence-based behavioral therapies are often implemented with limited fidelity and are under-used. Treatments using these evidence-based practices have shown better results than non-evidence-based treatments and services.
• Promising scientific evidence suggests that several electronic technologies, like the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and the use of telehealth, could improve access, engagement, monitoring, and continuing supportive care of those with substance use disorders.
  

I have a feeling that any answer to this question based on law would be found to be unsatisfactory. So there is no point in quoting Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists (1802):

 Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Similarly,  the plain language of the First Amendment plainly reads  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” If our Founding Fathers had meant for “freedom of religion” to mean only Christianity should exist in America, I’m pretty sure that would have been specified. Likewise, statements of historical fact like quoting the  words of Treaty of Tripoli (realizing in law treaties stand equal to the Constitution in precedential value): “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..” will likely also not persuade.

So instead why not go to the religious person’s playground to show him/her how wrong s/he is if she thinks religion should be involved with government. In the most widely quoted summary of the relationship between Christianity, secular government, and society, hostile questioners tried to trap Jesus into taking an explicit and dangerous stand on whether Jews should or should not pay taxes to the Roman authorities. The accounts in Matthew 22:15-22 and Mark 12:13-17 say that the questioners were Pharisees and Herodians, while Luke 20:20-26 says only that they were "spies" sent by "teachers of the law and the chief priests". They anticipated that Jesus would oppose the tax, as their purpose was "to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor".[Luke 20:20] The governor was Pilate, and he was the man responsible for the collecting of taxes in Roman Judea. At first the questioners flattered Jesus by praising his integrity, impartiality, and devotion to truth. Then they asked him whether or not it is right for Jews to pay the taxes demanded by Caesar. In the Gospel of Mark[12:15] the additional, provocative question is asked, "Should we pay or shouldn't we?"

Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar's tax. One of them showed him a Roman coin, and he asked them whose head and inscription were on it. They answered, "Caesar's," and he responded: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's”. The questioners were impressed. Matthew 22:22 states that they "marveled" (ἐθαύμασαν) and being satisfied with the answer, they went away.

Clearly Jesus was teaching what was to become in America the doctrine of separation of church and state. The state should stay out of religion and religion should stay out of matters of state. The priest needs to heed the words spoke by Jesus himself. Doesn’t Jesus respond to Pontius Pilate about the nature of his kingdom: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But now (or 'as it is') my kingdom is not from the world" (John 18:36); i.e., his religious teachings were separate from earthly political activity. This reflects a traditional division in Christian thought by which state and church have separate spheres of influence. A more simple explanation is that quite literally the people were not yet of his kingdom for if they were, the servants would rise up against the obvious injustice for convicting an innocent man.

Stephanie Potochnick, an assistant professor of public affairs and public health at the University of Missouri, sought to provide more information about Mexican immigrants’ access to food stamps and food in general. She used data from the U.S. Census’ 1995-2013 Current Population Survey to help gauge how the 2002 Farm Bill influenced food stamp participation among low-income Mexican immigrants, which she calls “the largest and most disadvantaged immigrant group.” Potochnick’s study sample includes almost 38,000 low-income households with children.

In Social Science Research, November 2016, in an article entitled, “Reversing welfare reform? Immigrant restoration efforts and food stamp receipt among Mexican immigrant families,” she was able to conclude the following:

• Among low-income households, Mexican immigrants were much less likely than U.S. native families to receive food stamps. On average, 17 percent of low-income “Mexican Mixed Citizen” households – households that were headed by a Mexican non-citizen but had members who were citizens – participated in the food stamp program. In comparison, 32 percent of low-income native U.S. households collected food stamps. One percent of low-income households comprised only of noncitizens born in Mexico received food stamps.
• After adoption of the 2002 Farm Bill, food stamp participation rose among Mexican immigrants, except those who were likely to be undocumented.
• Mexican immigrant households had higher unemployment rates than U.S. native households.
• Mexican immigrant households were larger than U.S. native households. For example, Mexican Mixed Citizen households had 4.85 people, on average, compared to 3.98 people in U.S. native households.
• Immigrant households were less educated. For example, in 49 percent of Mexican Mixed Citizen households, no one had finished high school. That was true for 13 percent of the U.S. native households included in the study.
• Households headed by a Mexican-born, naturalized U.S. citizen were least likely to report that they experienced food insecurity, or challenges accessing and paying for food, within the previous 12 months.
  

Incidentally, the U.S. Census has created an interactive map that provides a snapshot of SNAP participants – including race, work status and household income — for every congressional district.

Mass incarceration’s heavy burden on taxpayers
Trump has not released many specifics on how he would handle mass incarceration. However, many comments he has made seem at odds with recent bipartisan efforts to reform the system. In his nominating speech at the RNC in July, Trump slammed “this administration's rollback of criminal enforcement.” Portraying himself as the “law and order” candidate who will be “tough on crime,” Trump pledged to combat the crime and lawlessness that threatens American communities. Trump reinstated his tough stance on crime by critiquing President Obama’s commutations of sentences of drug offenders. "Some of these people are bad dudes," he said. "These are people out walking the streets. Sleep tight, folks."

In 2010, Michelle Alexander, a professor at the Ohio State University School of Law, published “The New Jim Crow,” a study of mass incarceration among African-Americans. Like many influential works, the book identified trends that had been apparent for some time. Alexander noted that the prison population in the United States had grown from roughly three hundred thousand, in the early nineteen-seventies, to two million, after 2000. “The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China and Iran,” she wrote. Moreover, “the racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature.”

This critique has grown in intensity in recent years. “Mass incarceration is ahistorical, criminogenic, inefficient, and racist,” Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, has explained.. “Throughout much of American history, we incarcerated about one hundred people per one hundred thousand people in the population. After the eighties, it moved to six hundred or seven hundred per hundred thousand. Prisons are finishing schools for criminals, so they breed more crime. They cost a fortune to maintain. And the racism of the process just starts with drug crimes. Black people don’t use drugs more than anyone else, but, with thirteen per cent of the population, black people make up close to forty per cent of inmates serving time for drug offenses.”

But doesn’t common sense throwing people in jail more often will reduce crime? It turns out that increased incarceration has a much more limited effect on crime than popularly thought. It has been found that this growth in incarceration was responsible for approximately 5 percent of the drop in crime in the 1990s. (This could vary from 0 to 10 percent.) Since then, however, increases in incarceration have had essentially zero effect on crime. The positive returns are gone. That means the colossal number of Americans cycling in and out of prisons and jails over the last 13 years was not responsible for any meaningful fraction of the drop in crime. Today, a 1 percent increase in incarceration would lead to a microscopic 0.02 percent decline in crime. This is statistically indistinguishable from having no effect at all. Since the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, further increasing incarceration is not likely to materially reduce crime. It will simply cost taxpayers more money.

For tough anti-crime policies; not criminals’ rights (but not organized crime)
We can have safe streets. But unless we stand up for tough anticrime policies, they will be replaced by policies that emphasize criminals’ rights over those of ordinary citizens.

Soft criminal sentences are based on the proposition that criminals are the victims of society. A lot of people in high places really do believe that criminals are victims. The only victim of a violent crime is the person getting shot, stabbed, or raped. The perpetrator is never a victim. He’s nothing more than a predator.
Source: The America We Deserve, by Donald Trump, p. 93-94 , Jul 2, 2000

It should be noted that Trump's description of crime in the U.S. is at odds with reality since overall violent crime is down, according to the FBI statistics. The current violent crime rate is lower today per the most recent data (365 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 people) than when President Obama first took office in 2009 (431 incidents per 100,000 people).

Tough anti-crime policies but not organized crime
Officials with the New York State Organized Crime Task Force said that Trump, while not breaking any laws, "circumvented" state limits on individual and corporate contributions "by spreading his payments among eighteen subsidiary companies."

Trump alluded to his history of political giving in August this year, at the first Republican debate, bragging that he gave money with the confidence that he would get something in return. "I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me," he said. "And that's a broken system."

As he fed the political machine, he also had to work with unions and companies known to be controlled by New York's ruling mafia families, which had infiltrated the construction industry, according to court records, federal task force reports and newspaper accounts. No serious presidential candidate has ever had his depth of business relationships with the mob-controlled entities. Source: Chicago Tribune

Racial Profiling is needed
Trump has actively encouraged the practice of profiling, particularly to prevent possible acts of terror. Following Saturday’s bombing in Manhattan, Trump said in a Monday phone interview with “Fox & Friends,” “Our local police, they know who a lot of these people are. They’re afraid to do anything about it because they don’t want to be accused of profiling.” Trump  praised Israel’s profiling tactics, a point that Trump also brought up during a June interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Just after the Orlando shooting, Trump pointed to Israel as a nation that did profiling “successfully” before adding, “And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads."

That racial profiling can be a tricky tactic is something Americans should understand by observing the diversity of some of the terrorists who have operated on domestic soil or against Americans -- Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber), Eric Rudolph (the abortion clinic bomber), Richard Reid (the ponytailed British-Jamaican who tried to bring down an American Airlines jet with his shoe) and the Arab hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Professor David Harris is Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, teaching Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence. Professor Harris taught at The University of Toledo College of Law through 2007, where he was the Eugene Balk Professor of Law and Values. Professor Harris is the leading national authority on racial profiling. His law journal articles about profiling became the basis for the Traffic Stops Statistics Act of 1997, the first national legislative proposal in the nation to attempt to address profiling. His 2002 book, “Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work,” and his research on profiling led to reform efforts by the federal government, by more than half the states, and by hundreds of police departments. He has testified numerous times in the U.S. Congress and before many state legislative bodies on profiling and related issues. 

Professor Harris has explained that focusing on specific ethnic groups alienates the very people authorities need to help them catch terrorists. "By the time the threat is at the subway or airport, we're down to the last line of defense," Harris says. "You really want to catch these people before they go to the subway." Harris, the author of "Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work," simply says profiling doesn't work. Harris says that when police use race or ethnic appearance as a factor in law enforcement, their accuracy in catching criminals decreases. Even worse, it can lead to accidental deaths, such as the fatal shooting by London police of an innocent Brazilian man after the bombings there. Harris points to a study of New York's "stop and frisk" campaign in the late 1990s, when police were stopping people in the streets on a regular basis in an effort to confiscate illegal weapons and reduce crime. The campaign created tension between the police and minority communities, who thought they were being unfairly targeted for frisks. It turned out they were right.

Immigrants kill people
The statements that generated votes for Trump: they came within the first few minutes of his campaign kick-off, after he rambled for a bit about the crowd and the Islamic State and Japan. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." Trump also said that, “Where was sanctuary for all the other ... Americans who have been so brutally murdered [by undocumented immigrants], and who have suffered so, so horribly?”
 
 This is simply wrong. Pew researchers have found that first-generation immigrants (legal or not) commit less crime than native-born Americans or second-generation immigrants. Americans need to realize that their fear that immigration cause crime is baseless belief.

 Bring Back the Death Penalty
In April 1989, Trump saw an opportunity to speak his mind when a young white woman was raped and beaten while out for a jog in Central Park. As media reports shocked the city and the victim struggled for survival, police mounted an intense investigation that ended with the apprehension of five black youths between the ages of 14 and 16. The five implicated themselves under interrogation, but would later recant, saying they had been pressured into making false statements. Donald Trump bought full-page advertisements in the city's four big daily papers to proclaim BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!
Although he avoided naming the accused in the jogger case, Trump's reference to "roving bands of wild criminals" left no doubt about why he had paid for the ads. Newspaper accounts had described "wolf pack" gangs marauding in the park.
Source: Never Enough, by Michael D'Antonio, p.192 , Sep 22, 2015

 Capital punishment isn’t uncivilized; murderers living is
Civilized people don’t put up with barbaric behavior. Would it have been civilized to put Hitler in prison? No-it would have been an affront to civilization. The same is true of criminals who prey on innocent people. They have declared war on civilization. I don’t care if the victim is a CEO or a floor sweeper. A life is a life, and if you criminally take an innocent life you’d better be prepared to forfeit your own. My only complaint is that lethal injection is too comfortable a way to go
Source: The America We Deserve, by Donald Trump, p.102-3 , Jul 2, 2000

 Trump fails to acknowledge the evidence: in States without the death penalty the homicide rate is lower. "We're very hard pressed to find really strong evidence of deterrence," said Columbia Law School's Jeffrey Fagan. Fagan pointed to New York as an example. Former Gov. George Pataki (R) reinstated capital punishment in New York in 1995, and although no prisoners were executed, the law remained in place until the New York Court of Appeals struck it down in 2004. Whether or not criminals faced the threat of death seemed to have little effect on their behavior. "New York's homicide decline has continued before the capital-punishment statute, through the capital-punishment statute, and after the capital-punishment statute," Fagan said. Fagan and two collaborators recently compared murder rates in Hong Kong, where capital punishment was abolished in 1993, and Singapore, where a death sentence is mandatory for murder and other crimes and is typically administered within a year and a half. The researchers found little difference between the two Asian metropolises.

 Hold judges accountable; don’t reduce sentences
Criminals are often returned to society because of forgiving judges. This has to stop. We need to hold judges more accountable, and the best way to make that happen is to elect them. Whey they hurt us, we need to make sure we can vote them out of the job. The rest of us need to rethink prisons and punishment. The next time you hear someone saying there are too many people in prison, ask them how many thugs they’re willing to relocate to their neighborhood. The answer: None.
Source: The America We Deserve, by Donald Trump, p.106-7 , Jul 2, 2000

Need directions? Or a restaurant recommendation? These days, you’d probably seek help on your smartphone — a handy know-it-all device that can spit out answers to almost anything anywhere at any time. But a mere ten years ago, you may have asked someone — a neighbor, a stranger — for help.

At the start of 2015, 39 of the top 50 digital news websites have more traffic to their sites and associated applications coming from mobile devices than from desktop computers, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of comScore data.  On average people use a small number of trusted news sources on the mobile phone. According to a recent study from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, the average across all countries is 1.52 per person, significantly fewer than on a tablet or computer. Even though 70% of smartphone users have a news app installed on their phone, only a third of respondents actually use them in a given week, reinforcing the difficulty many news brands have in cutting through on this crowded and very personal device. In the United States, the average number of news apps is 1.5.

But have you ever considered the social cost to that handy source of information? 

One problem is that while supplying valid information, the internet also can rapidly disseminate unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15––where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. Massive digital misinformation is becoming pervasive in online social media to the extent that it has been listed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as one of the main threats to our society.

However, I would suggest a more fundamental problem: what happens when we forget how to talk to each other, rely on each other, and instead talk to a machine?  New research looks at the unseen social costs of this change in how we obtain information and interact with others.  Generally it was found that the more people relied on their mobile phones for information, the less they trusted strangers, neighbors and people from other religions and nationalities. In contrast, obtaining information through any other method—including TV, radio, newspapers, and even the Internet more broadly—predicted higher trust in those groups.

Psychologists Kostadin Kushlev of the University of Virginia and Jason Proulx of the University of British Columbia investigate if using smartphones is associated with declining trust in others, what they call “the social lubricant of society.” The authors theorize that “by changing where and what information people have access to, ubiquitous computing may decrease people’s interdependence with other members of society — especially those we normally encounter only outside of the sphere of close relationships.” For example, are smartphone users less inclined to ask people for advice or information — such as directions or restaurant recommendations — when they could turn to Google?

The authors used a nationally representative sample of 2,187 Americans who answered questions on how often they rely on mobile phones and other sources of information, and how much they trust other groups, including family, neighbors, foreigners and strangers. With these data points, controlling for demographic and geographic variables, they were able to “explore the relationship between mobile information and trust.” They also assessed whether this relationship depends on social bonds. For example, are family members more trustworthy than strangers?

Here are other key findings:

• The more someone uses a smartphone for information, the less likely she is to trust “neighbors, strangers, and people from other religions or nationalities.”
• Reliance on smartphones had no correlation with how much people trust those from their inner circle, such as family members.
• Demographic factors do not explain these findings.
• The authors interpret the findings: “We theorized that mobile information erodes trust in strangers by interfering with casual opportunities to talk with strangers and by obviating the need to rely on others.”
• It is possible that the correlation could be understood in the reverse: That “people who trust others less might be more likely to use their mobile phones for information.”

 
 
 

In moral and political philosophy, the social contract or political contract is a theory, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.  Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.  The term takes its name from The Social Contract a 1762 book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau which discussed this concept.  Rousseau argues a citizen cannot pursue his true interest by being an egoist but must instead subordinate himself to the law created by the citizenry acting as a collective. 

Thus, the enforcement of criminal law is not a restriction on individual liberty: the individual, as a citizen, explicitly agreed to be constrained if, as a private individual, he did not respect his own will as formulated in the general will.  These theories are important since, as creatures of the Age of Enlightenment, our Founding Fathers incorporated them into the design of our government.

So what happens to the legitimacy of our government if the government revokes the contract by saying it has no duty to protect you? 

Importantly in a couple of US Supreme Court decisions the Court has said the government does not have to care about you.  In Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005), the Court ruled, 7–2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for failing to enforce a restraining order, which had led to the murder of a woman's three children by her estranged husband.  The Court's majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia held that enforcement of the restraining order was not mandatory under Colorado law; were a mandate for enforcement to exist, it would not create an individual right to enforcement that could be considered a protected entitlement under the precedent of Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth; and even if there were a protected individual entitlement to enforcement of a restraining order, such entitlement would have no monetary value and hence would not count as property for the Due Process Clause.  Likewise, the U.S. Supreme Court South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. 396 (1855) found that law enforcement officers had no affirmative duty to provide such protection. In Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir. 1982) the Court of Appeals held, "...there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen."

Thus, the Supreme Court found that domestic violence victims do not have a federal right to police enforcement of their protective orders.  Some have argued that this decision effectively gives law enforcement a green light to ignore restraining orders.  As Justice Stevens wrote in the dissent, "the Court gives short shrift to the unique case of [statutes requiring police enforcement] in the domestic violence context."

Castle Rock v. Gonzales is the latest in a lineage of high-profile cases, such as DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989) in which lawsuits against governmental entities for failure to prevent harm to an individual were dismissed.  Since the police are not obliged to protect us, say gun rights advocates, it is argued that adults need the ability to defend themselves. Thus, no law or policy should impede the access to gun ownership to protect ourselves and family.