Conjoined twins, question to satisfy my eight year old daughter

[noxlumos]

hi, We've been studying crime,punishment and social responsibility etc as part of her education and purely hypothetically to satisfy my eight year old daughter's curiosity what would be the likely outcome of the following?
One conjoined twin get a gun or a knife and murders someone very publicly, the other tries to stop him and fails. How would this be dealt with by the courts and how would a suitable punishment/ protection of the public be meted out. What she really wants to know is would they imprison them ( including obviously the innocent one) and if so on what grounds? If not could they allow a cold blooded murderer to walk the streets in the interests of protecting the quality of life of the innocent one?
I appreciate that it's unlikely to ever happen but she wants to know what the law states if it actually did.
Thanks in advance :)

[Beanmistriss]

What a fabulous question! I'm afraid I have absolutly no idea of the answer though :)

[Oneeyedvic]

The law will not state anything on this since the chances of it happening are so remote - just as the law says nothing on whether or not a visiting alien needs to have a licence to fly aircraft!

there are (as far as I am aware) less than 20 conjoined twins in the world, so I'm afraid it would be a very unique case if one did go on the rampage.

Unless it were to happen, there would not be a ruling on the matter, so unfortunately, whilst it may be an interesting debating point, there will be no right or wrong answer.

[claireybear]

What a wonderful imagination your daughter must have! That is an excellant question and one to be pondered upon. Even if the chances of it ever happening are very remote it is still a conundrom.

[Bevron]

The Romans would have loved this problem! If only they had the imagination of your daughter.

[missjef]

what a great question.
Its a tough choice i suppose, maybe they would order a seperation (if possible) to be performed before they decide on what should happen.
another thing is how would they know which one did it if both protested it was the other and not them? would that mean they would both get punished anyway?

[Eve]

Try this...http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/quer y/0,5753,-21409,00.html

[noxlumos]

Brilliant thank you all esp jenna. She particularly liked the helmet with 4 walls idea ( unlikely though it was). She can't reconcile imprisoning an innocent person so her own opinion is that they must walk free, albeit perhaps that the "evil" twin needs to be restrained in some way. Thank you all very much:)

[PinkFizz]

God what a good question! Very clever kid you have there Nox!

[bbnd1979]

I've heard of a case where something less sinister happened with Siamese twins. Can't remember what the crime was; it wasn't murder, but still imprisonable... think they were Far Eastern some time around the 30's maybe.

A judge ruled that he could not incarcerate one twin without knowingly falsely imprisoning the other, so set them both free. I remember the story because one twin woke one day to find his brother had died, and then he died himself an hour later of a broken heart.