What if a Siamese twin was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair?
There isn’t much case law to work with on this question, since in the United States, at least, conjoined twins represent something like 0.0005 percent of all live births—with an even smaller number surviving into adulthood. The conjoined twins who aren’t separated at birth and do manage to grow up have so far tended to be more or less exemplary citizens. That said, there have been a few recorded instances of conjoined criminality. By one account, the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, were arrested over a scuffle with a doctor who tried to examine them, but never prosecuted. Nor were they ever charged with bigamy, despite having taken two wives. Then there’s the case of the 17th-century Italian gentleman Lazarus Colloredo, who wore a cloak to conceal the protruding upper body of his brother Joannes Baptista. The historian Henri Sauval claims to have played the twins in a game of handball in Paris and that Lazarus afterwards boasted of having killed a man without repercussion
