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[soresuress]

Class, the topic is:

The defense of necessity, which, by the way, has so far the most highly entertaining cases, is based on the fact that one has a reasonable belief that what they are doing "out of necessity" is actually of necessity. That is to say, they believe that they must do x because not doing x would cause greater harm although x is

Comments

[greatgoatman]

There's something about premise 1 that I don't like. It doesn't seem 100% fair that the guy who tries to kill his wife gets off easier than the guy who does. Let's say they're the same in every respect other than that the wife survives. The first wife is fortunate enough to have an outstanding medical team seeing to her after the attack, and so lives, the second one is not quite so lucky

[soresuress]

Thanks for playing :) I attempted to advance this argument in class, as it was similar to my original impression, and was sort of led into a trap, I was forced to conclude philosophically (which is fine in phl classes) but not so much in practical classes of law. The argument went like this

[losifer]

It seems from my comfy position in a counseling office that there may be a difference of the purpose of prison. If, as it is often suggested, prison is for the reform of the people who commit heinous crimes like the ones that Don has listed, then yes, I think that intent to kill should be treated as much the same as the succeeding in killing.
However if the purpose of prison is to punish, then it seems as though there should be some weighing of how much damage was actually done as well as was intended to be done.