An interesting question faced the Supreme Court of Vermont in 1966. A woman sought to receive the estate of her dead husband, which totaled about four thousand dollars. Her husband had died without a, will in 1961. The law of Vermont held that if a person was married and died without a will, then their surviving spouse was entitled to the inheritance. The problem was that the woman in this case, Mrs. Mahoney, had been tried in 1962 and convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of her husband. When she claimed the estate, the trial court ruled that it belonged to the dead man's parents because she had killed her husband. However, there was no state law dealing with this unusual series of events, and Mrs. Mahoney claimed that she had a legal right to her husband's property. On appeal the Supreme Court made an...