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Legal puzzle
2012-08-26 17:52A 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.
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.
