This sounds like a plot for The BlackList.
Or one of the Saw movies.
Except your identical actions can lead to different crimes. You point a gun at a person, and pull the trigger. If there’s an ambulance nearby and your victim gets rushed to the hospital and saved, you get charged with attempted murder. If the ambulance is too late and your victim dies, you get charged with murder. Same exact actions on your part leading to different charges based on the actions of others.
reminds me of Moral Luck
Yes, but in that case, I have initiated a chain of events that leads to a death, if it is not otherwise averted. In the button example, my pushing the button has no effect on whether the victim dies; so I have not initiated a chain of events leading to death unless averted, rather, somebody else has, and nevertheless, I am culpable. If the other had not pushed the button, nobody would’ve died, whether or not I push mine.
No. The justification is that you don[t have to have caused anybody’s death as the consequence of your own actions viewed in isolation. But if a group of people co-operate in a common plan, either intending that someone’s death will result or being reckless as to the risk of someone’s death, and someone dies as a result of their combined actions in execution of the plan, they they are all guilty of murder.
Or, in other words, if you intentionally act jointly with other people, your criminal liablity is not limited to the particular actions that you personally undertake; you’re liable for the joint actions of the group. Which is why the getaway driver, for example, can be charged with robbery, even though he never went into the bank, never demanded money, never took money.
What UDS says.
It is NOT “solely due to the tenth”, particularly because of the apparatus employed in your hypothetical. All ten agreed to set up the apparatus which would shoot ONLY ONE BULLET. It is too late to say “i didn’t push my button so I have no liability”. You set it all up. You are there. When your co-conspirator(s) pushed, he was just giving effect to the plan and each and every one of those who participated is guilty. Only one bullet got fired, just as you all arranged with your “apparatus”. It doesn’t matter who pressed. Your plan went ahead just as planned. If you want to avoid liability by saying you changed your mind, you have to do more than just assert that you didn’t press a button - it isn’t one thing you didn’t do, you have to distance yourself from the entire plan/agreement.
A button pressed by any one of you gave effect to the agreement. That’s enough. You participated in that unlawful killing and you are criminally liable for it.
(as a practicality, nobody is going to believe any assertion that you, or any of the other co-conspirators didn’t push a button. If each had a gun, you could show that your gun hadn’t been fired. There’s no way of corroborating “I didn’t push!”)
Thanks for the two posts above, it’s making more sense now. My intuition still balks at the possibility that guilt can be decided in such a way by another. The point, by the way, is not that I think you should get out of a conviction because you didn’t push the button, but that there are two possibilities, in one of which everybody is not guilty of murder, because nobody pushed their button, and in the other of which everybody is guilty, because at least one person pushed theirs: thus, the decision between these alternatives is out of your hand if you don’t push your button—which, somewhat paradoxically, makes it immaterial whether you do. But it’s not like my intuition hasn’t been wrong before.
But you have initiated a chain of events that will lead to death. You helped set up the murder machine, you helped strap the victim into the murder machine, you conspired with everyone to set up the murder machine.
Able calls up his buddy Baker and says, “Charlie is going to reveal everything to the newspapers. He needs to be silenced. Go and get your gun and shoot Charlie.” Baker goes and gets his gun and shoots Charlie. Baker pulled the trigger, Baker sat there and watched as Charlie died, Baker got the t-shirt “I killed Charlie”. Able didn’t pull the trigger, Able didn’t fire a gun, Able was 100 miles away when it happened. But Able is still going to be charged for murder. If Baker hadn’t pulled the trigger, then Charlie wouldn’t have died. It doesn’t change the fact that Able is also guilty of murder, just as much as Baker.
What Lemur866 said…
You are thinking of the death as having to be the direct result of a specific person’s act and that that specific person’s act “makes them the murderer”.
I mentioned above that the wording of the statute is something along the lines of “if a person does any act”. That “any act” isn’t confined to the particular act that directly “causes” the death, like pulling a trigger or plunging in the knife or whatever.
Your co-conspirators have all agreed to participate equally. The “acts” each did up until the button-pushing were all done by each, and they were all done to cause the victim’s death. Who pushed or didn’t push does not matter.
IF, in your hypothetical, they needed an electrician or engineer to help with the “murder machine”. IF they told that person that they were helping to rig a “murder machine” and that person rigged the machine knowing that it was to kill a person, then that electrician or engineer was also guilty of (wilful) murder, even if he or she wasn’t there at the “button-pushing”. They did an act intending it to kill a person, and the person died. That’s wilful murder.
As I mentioned before, the respective roles of participants may make a difference to sentence (though probably not for wilful murder, you really don’t get to weasel out of participating in deliberately killing somebody and there are mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment that you’ll be getting regardless of how much or how little you did to further the plan to kill the person)
Stop thinking in “direct” terms, and think in terms of “did this person do something that led to the death?” Rigging up the machine, getting the person there, etc etc all mean that they participated in causing the death, regardless of who pushed or didn’t push.
By the way, the legal doctrine here is known as Joint Eneterprise, or Common Purpose.
I think you’re missing my point. I accept that I’ll be guilty in the murder, regardless of whether I pushed the button. But there’s an additional subtlety in that it might come to pass that nobody dies: if either, nobody pushes their buttons, or all the buttons that are pushed aren’t connected. In that case, I (along with everyone else) am innocent (of murder, at least), since no murder actually occurred.
So there’s the following possibilities:
[ol]
[li]I push my button, which is not connected; nobody else pushes their buttons. Nobody dies.[/li][li]I push my button, which is not connected; somebody else pushes theirs, which is. The victim dies.[/li][li]I push my button, which is connected; the victim dies.[/li][li]I don’t push my button; either nobody else does, either, or theirs aren’t connected. Nobody dies.[/li][li]I don’t push my button; at least one other person does, and their button is connected. The victim dies. [/li][/ol]
Consequently, there’s cases in which I push my button, and somebody either dies, or not, and there’s cases where I do push my button, and somebody either dies, or not. Consequently, if I push my button, I’m either guilty (of murder), or not, and if I don’t push my button, I’m likewise either guilty, or not. So me pushing my button doesn’t matter (or at best, in a probabilistic sense, but even that can be avoided); yet, whether a button is pushed is of course all that matters (as it ultimately decides between life and death, and hence, guilt or innocence).
So we have the following set of true assertions:
[ol]
[li]Whether a button is pushed decides between guilt and innocence.[/li][li]Whether button 1 is pushed has no effect on guilt and innocence.[/li][li]Whether button 2 is pushed has no effect on guilt and innocence.[/li][li]…[/li][li]Whether button 10 is pushed has no effect on guilt and innocence.[/li][/ol]
This doesn’t have anything to do with my helping to set up the apparatus, strapping in the victim, and so on—all of which I may either have or have not done. We can do the same sort of analysis for all of those—for instance, if everybody assembles their own part of the device, each communicating via radio, not knowing whether anybody else actually built theirs.
The salient piece in the puzzle is then intent: whether I agreed to take part in the whole thing, or not. But this intent—unlike the case with the hired hitman—is neither necessary nor sufficient to the killing. The others could have carried on without me; and even with my agreement, it only takes one person not pushing their button (if it’s the right one) to not enact the plan. The hitman, however, wouldn’t act without me hiring him; thus, the willful act on my part is necessary, in the same way it is when I fire a pistol, even though in both cases, external circumstances may conspire to foil the planned murder (gun misfiring, hitman suddenly converting to Buddhism, or something like that).
What you are saying isn’t clear, that’s for sure.
Pushing buttons doesn’t determine guilt and innocence. Every participant is guilty of conspiracy to commit (wilful) murder regardless as to whether the person dies. If they all turn up to the “murder day” and somebody pushes but the bullet doesn’t fire for whatever reason, they are guilty of attempted (wilful) murder. If the victim dies of fright while strapped to the chair, they are guilty of murder. The buttons don’t have any significance; whether the person dies does, but even if the person does not die, there is still guilt, just not of (wilful) murder.
You may be right that your involvement in this plan wasn’t necessary or sufficient to the killing, but it doesn’t matter IF there is a group engaged in a joint enterprise. Same as you have an office full of people, one answers the phone, another does the payroll, another markets the products. They are all engaged in the company’s business but no individual is necessary or sufficient to bringing in the profits of the company. Nor does that change if the company isn’t actually in profit (in the same way that the plan doesn’t have to succeed in making the victim dead)
Well, I tried my best. 
Wiki on the killing of Ken “Tex” McElroy, a bastard who deserved to die and have nobody prosecuted for the “crime.”
In Spain they’d get both “murder” and “conspiracy to commit a crime”. Might even throw in “criminal association”, just to round it up. Or even that lovely “belonging to an armed gang”. You know, just so the judge can have fun throwing the book around.
I’m not sure why this is surprising, as life is filled with rewards and punishments based on the actions of others.
While it’s not a perfect example, look at any team sports, which rewards the entire team (with a “win,” cash/prizes, moving forward in a tournament, etc.) or punishes the entire team (with a “loss,” no cash/prizes, doesn’t advance, etc.) and not individual players. Someone can have their best performance of their life, but if the team fails to deliver, then that person loses just as much as if the team’s poor performance were due to the person’s personal failure.
Although you are looking at the guilt or innocence of murder, even if the intended victim doesn’t die, Johnny Chicken’s actions show he’s guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder. If caught, he’s going to face a long prison term.