In a unexampled essay Half Guilty , Nick Kam explore the legal ramifications of a thought experiment : if a conjoined duplicate commits murder , can the legal organisation punish them ? Could the innocent twin be punished merely for their unusual medical condition ?
Kam , a third - year pupil at the University of San Francisco School of Law , is currently work on the piece , which he hasexcerpted on his website . He inquire to imagine a scenario where a conjoined twin commits murder and the liquidator ’s twin is completely barren of the criminal offence . This , by the bye , is the plot of the 1951 exploitation film chain for Life , starring Violet and Daisy Hilton , see above , and Kam cites a diachronic phonograph record of such a execution occurring in 17th century Italy . Kam then enquire whether such a conjoined twin could be punished under the American sound system .
The essay look at the various possible methods of attain punishment , including execution , imprisonment , physically separating the twins , and monetary price . He research the result of the punishment both in terms of the social goal of punishment and how it would impact the innocent counterpart — and he cite some fair squirm scenarios , such as adjudicate to execute one twin but not the other by burning .
It ’s ultimately an interesting cerebration experiment , one that examines the goal of legal punishment and the proportional weighting our social values . But if aesculapian engineering gain to the point where the breakup of conjoined twins could be achieve safely and easily — or where one twin could , in fact , be executed — then doubtfulness like this could become even more complicated . It would be interesting to see Kam explore the question of whether an impeccant conjoined twin would have complete territory over his or her own body , or whether the legal system could someday preclude them from harboring a criminal on their own anatomically anomalous person .
Half Guilty[Nick Kam ]
Science
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