Monday, January 04, 2010

How Should the Law Be Applied if One of Two Conjoined Twins (Popularly Know as Siamese Twins) Commits Murder While the Second is Merely an Onlooker?

Chang & Eng Bunker (1835 or 1836) - public dom...Image via Wikipedia

I'll cut to the chase:

As actors under American criminal law, conjoined twins present paradoxical obstacles to the application of traditional methods of criminal punishments. The Western notion of individuality precludes such duplicitous beings from orthodox measures to remedy criminal action, particularly the crime of murder. Constitutional limitations of due process and guarantees of life, liberty and property militate against equal treatment of these actors under the law. I believe that within our Constitutional framework, the only thing to be done in this situation is to release the conjoined twins.

So says 3rd year USF law student Nick Kam, to whose blog I was directed by my standing Google news search for stuff pertaining to my employer.

And what if the innocent twin was a reporter and the killer twin was his source? I'll figure out a way to shoehorn this into journalism ethics the next time I teach it.
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