If the law supposes that, the law is a ass -- a idiot.
--Mr. Bumble's judgment of the law, from Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
A casebook is a collection of judicial opinions that students of the law must consume in large chunks in preparation for law school lectures. The first case in my criminal law casebook, the first case that most all English-speaking law students study in their first-year course, is an astonishing murder trial from England that raises uncomfortable questions about the first law that governs man: the law of necessity.
The case involved the murder trial of the sailors of the Mignonette. In a nutshell, the story goes like this: four sailors were aboard a yacht when a rogue wave hit the tiny ship, sending her to the bottom of the sea. The sailors managed to scramble aboard a life boat with seconds to spare. Between the four of them, they had two cans of turnips and no water.
Set adrift in the Atlantic, with little hope of rescue, they were slowly starving to death. After two weeks, the youngest and weakest lapsed into semi-consciousness. The three older sailors – after much deliberation and examinations of their consciences – killed him and resorted to eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Days later, they were rescued.
Upon their return to England, they were tried for murder. Although it was well established that their act undoubtedly saved their lives, the law’s judgment was extraordinarily harsh.
From the opinion:
We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and lay down rules we could not ourselves satisfy. But a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he himself might have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime. It is, therefore, our duty to declare that the prisoners’ act in this case was wilful murder.
And is that not an astounding confession for judges to make – that if subjected to the same horrors, their conduct might have been exactly the same? Nonetheless, the judges handed down sentences of death. At the same time, a pardon was in the works, and the men were soon freed.
There is in every casebook an example of a murder that you or I or anyone better than us would commit. There are people in prison right now serving life sentences for murders that we could have done.
One case that makes me whisper there but for the Grace of God is the famous case of Betty Broderick. The California housewife who devoted her life to her family, who worked while raising her children to put her husband through law school, was a picture of domestic perfection – until her husband, upon reaching the pinnacle of success and fortune as a medical malpractice attorney – dumped her for a much younger woman.
Says Betty:
I always worked and had four kids to spoil… I also kept a beautiful, clean and orderly home and did 99.9% of the housework myself…. We were never “rich” while married. We didn’t get “rich” until 1983 – the first thing he did was get a red Corvette and a bimbo.… as soon as he was ready to take the leap we had worked so hard to attain, I got nothing but the big middle finger as “thanks” for everything.**
After an acidic divorce, after years of child custody wars, Betty Broderick shot and killed her ex-husband and his new wife. The first jury that sat in judgment of her could not reach a verdict. Said one member of the panel: “We only wondered what took her so long to kill him.”
The second jury did reach a decision, and today she is serving a sentence of 32 to life.
Maybe you don’t think you’ll ever be in a position to willfully commit a murder.
I don’t think so either.
I don’t think so….
***
** Quote from Letters From Prison: Voices of Women Murderers by Jennifer Furio.
For more about the Mignonette murder case, see: Amnesty International on the Mignonette Case; Brandeis University, Philosophy of the Law handout; and Custom of the Sea by Neil Hanson.
For more on Betty Broderick, see Broderick on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Until the 12th of Never by Bella Stumbo.
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