If I was in the position of being a surgeon and had to kill one person to save five I'm not sure how I would handle it. If I was in the position like most of us are at the meat section in our deli trying to select which rib-eye I want instead of actually killing the cow and then getting the meat I think it would have less effect on my conscience. In this case though I'm going to have to kill someone.
Since emotions play a role in every person's life I would first need to know who the people I'm saving are. Are they relative's , good people, bad people? All those factors being excluded I think I'd let nature take it's course and put them on comfort cares.
I would hope to make their transition as comfortable as possible. I don't really think if the surgeon ,who is paid quite well and has enough stress and patients each day, is going to worry about the lives of any five people he has no connection to.
I have this feeling because I used to work on the surgical floor of a hospital , cardiac, and I know that in the real world surgeons are getting told to get the most people in and out in a day as they can. So for them to think about losing there job , and status, and ending up in jail would be similar to having a typical college student rob a bank just so he can pay off a few parking tickets. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
For the second part of the question I would hope that the judge was a rule-utilitarian because then I would at least have some perspective and be given a chance to show my case in the best light. Rule-utilitarians say that things are the way they are but rules can be broken if it produces the most good.
So where an act-utilitarian will say you killed him, a rule-utilitarian might say something like you killed him but he was going to use his machine-gun to kill many more so killing him did more good than harm. Whereas if I had a judge who was an act-utilitarian he would see my case in black and white and most likely execute me.
Would like a short personal response to this?