Legal puzzle

[mindstalk]

A homicide has been committed. Three people confess to the murder; assume you're confident this was not coerced, at least by the state. Hard evidence of some sort indicates that only one of them could have actually performed the murder. All three must logically be guilty of murder or perjury, or maybe of intended/attempted murder in some tragicomedy of errors (i.e. three try but only one succeeds), but you don't know which.

I don't know how the law would cope with this. But morally, should you:

a) set them all free, because you can't pin a precise crime on any of them
b) send them up for perjury (assuming that's the lesser punishment), since you know all are guilty of at least that
c) send them up for murder, since they're all confessing to it, even though you know they didn't all do it.
d) send them up for attempted murder, since they're all confessing to murder, and it might be reasonable to assume they all wanted to kill the victim even if they didn't.

Comments

[februaryfour]

Morally, one would investigate and figure out just who'd actually done it before pressing any charges at all.

[mindstalk]

The presumption is that the limits of that have been reached!

Was the victim a hunchback?

[madprime.org]

The sultan would set them free, after ordering the court scribe to record the amazing tale. :-)

I think the motive for confessions is important to the decision -- e.g. perhaps conviction would be a reward, or maybe they're trying to get one of the others free.

[februaryfour]

Then clearly it is unsolvable!

[mindstalk]

It's unsolvable in terms of finding who murdered, but that wasn't the question, the question was whether you let them go or punish them for the crime of perjury.

[februaryfour]

Ah, my bad. I tend to equate the questions with justice. I withdraw all statements.