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Only entities with free will can be held morally responsible for actions. Computers do not have free will, therefore can never be morally responsible.

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IIRC someone in ancient Rome choked on some fruit, so they tried and convicted the tree of murder and had it chopped down. So there is legal precedent.

The Proescution and Punishment of Animals and Lifeless Things in the Middle Ages and Modern Times

https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_trial

I'm sure pretty much any crazy thing has legal precedent somewhere or another. So, we can accept all such precedent and have an incoherent and useless standard of law. Or, we can use good judgment as to what precedent is acceptable.

What is free will? Why can't a computer possess it? Why can we?

Free will is the ability to make choices that originate entirely from the individual, and cannot be attributed to mechanism or random chance, nor a combination thereof.

Computers are programed to do whatever they do, so they have no choice in the matter.

Humans, on the other hand, have an immaterial soul, and thus can make decisions that are not determined by material constructs.

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