Actually, my intuition finds your second example more straightforward than your first. I think in your second example A is the killer; and similarly if they each put in a substance that was unpleasant but not deadly and the two substances reacted to make a deadly poison, neither would be the killer and both ought to be legally guilty of manslaughter - just as if a single enemy put in an unpleasant substance which reacted fatally with a medicine he didn't know the victim was taking, he ought to be guilty of manslaughter.
Your first example is less clear, IMO. I think I'd have to say they both killed him. It's not quite the same as the original story - in the original story B's action actually thwarted A's murder attempt, whereas here it doesn't. This example has a symmetry that the original story lacks; there is nothing to distinguish A and B except chronological order, which seems an arbitrary criterion, and even one which it might not be possible to establish afterwards (A and B, with remorseful goodwill and/or lie detectors, might not be able to figure out which of them acted first). I think this one is equivalent to the case where they each put in a poison and the poisons don't react, so the bottle contains two poisons each of which is sufficient to kill C.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-06-02 06:27 pm (UTC)Your first example is less clear, IMO. I think I'd have to say they both killed him. It's not quite the same as the original story - in the original story B's action actually thwarted A's murder attempt, whereas here it doesn't. This example has a symmetry that the original story lacks; there is nothing to distinguish A and B except chronological order, which seems an arbitrary criterion, and even one which it might not be possible to establish afterwards (A and B, with remorseful goodwill and/or lie detectors, might not be able to figure out which of them acted first). I think this one is equivalent to the case where they each put in a poison and the poisons don't react, so the bottle contains two poisons each of which is sufficient to kill C.