>You can't expect people to telepathically know the law means something contrary to what it literally says.
This is exactly what a common law system expects you to know if what the law literally says is ridiculous. It is ridiculous that murder is legal if you get your intended victim in this area, and the law would expect you to say "hah, that's funny it says that, but I'm still not allowed to kill people"
Maybe if you had a Napoleonic system you could get away with it.
ok, sure, but I am going to be very surprised if anyone can find a high up precedent saying if you murder people in a tricky way it's ok.
So to clarify further, assuming no precedent had ever been recorded on this or a similar matter, the common law interpretation would probably be that you were expected not to murder people in this situation even though literal interpretation of the law would seem to state it was allowed.
But the real question is whether the defendant's rights were violated. Even if one knew they weren't supposed to murder, would a prosecution contrary to what's written in law violate their rights? At the least, it seems like a due process violation.
This is exactly what a common law system expects you to know if what the law literally says is ridiculous. It is ridiculous that murder is legal if you get your intended victim in this area, and the law would expect you to say "hah, that's funny it says that, but I'm still not allowed to kill people"
Maybe if you had a Napoleonic system you could get away with it.