A literary analogue perhaps worth mentioning, in addition to Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge': a short story by Guy de Maupassant, generally called in English "A Sale" or "A Deal" {can't immediately put hand on French title}, about two friends accused of attempted murder by drowning of wife of one of them. They get acquitted on the plea that, while drunk, one was only trying to sell her to the other "by the gallon" [or "litre", presumably, in the original] by measuring her displacement in a barrel of water. So the judge lets them off with a lecture on the sanctity of marriage and the wife goes amicably home with her husband..

~Michael~