Cannibalism

[TheRealJoeFish]

It isn't regarded as an excuse in the case of starving to death, as we have already discussed:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-31609-po...#pid880391

http://atheistforums.org/thread-31609-po...#pid880394

If starving to death isn't enough to excuse murder, why would being threatened with being shot in the head?

To clarify, I disagree with those cases; that is, I believe Regina v. Starving Sailor Dudes was wrongly decided.

But that is an exceptional case, one that reads more like theory than reality. I agree with your practical concerns, although I think you vastly overstate them (how could you prove someone wasn't holding a gun to the defendant's head? The same way you prove other defenses weren't applicable: circumstantial evidence. People get convicted of, and acquitted of, murder when there are no witnesses all the time).

I also think "whether the law incentivizes you to escape from a gun-wielding coercer" is way way wayyyyyyyyy down on the list of 1) things you're thinking about when someone's holding a gun to your head and 2) things we should be thinking about when setting policy.

@Losty: I agree that "a normal level of courage" is a really stupid formulation. This is the main hangup I have theoretically. But again, I think this happens every time one tries to set a legal standard (like "the reasonable man" or "clear and present danger"). There's a whole bunch of things that clearly fit, and a whole bunch of things that clearly don't, and in the rare or convoluted cases when it isn't obvious, well, that's when the jury is faced with the grave task of deciding someone's fate.
TL;DR version: "Normal courage" is a bad standard. But "we have a line-drawing problem" does not imply we should scrap policy altogether.