One of my favorite issues in criminal law is the choice of evils -- the rule that the defendant is justified if, setting aside certain side-constraints, he breaks the law in order to avoid or abate some other, much graver social harm. And one of the most well-known philosophical expositions of the choice of evils is Philippa Foot's and Judith Jarvis Thomson's "trolley problem": a trolley on a track is speeding out of control, and there are 2 people directly in its path. You are on the trolley, and have the power to divert the trolley to another track, where it would kill only one person. Should you do nothing or take action to divert the train?
Every so often, the choice of evils actually shows up in a real case, and it did about a week ago in the New York Court of Appeals case, People v. Freddy Rodriguez. Even more surprisingly, the case raises a quasi-trolley problem scenario. Here's what happened. Somebody named Rios parks his "overloaded box truck" on a hill, with the truck facing downhill. He turns the truck off, leaves the keys in the ignition, and goes into a store. While he's in the store, the truck goes down the hill, killing one person and seriously injuring two. But there was a dispute about how the truck got down the hill.
